


Try A Little Tenderness

by glycerineclown



Category: Glee
Genre: Age Difference, Homophobic Language, M/M, Physical Abuse, Religious Conflict, Verbal Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-02
Updated: 2012-07-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 01:08:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7781056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glycerineclown/pseuds/glycerineclown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Blaine Anderson was everything David Karofsky wasn’t, including done with college, well-spoken, kind, open, and sexy—and somehow exactly what I needed. I just needed to convince him of that.</i>
</p><p>AU Post-Rocky Horror. Dalton doesn’t exist. Blaine is the manager of Trax, a record store across the street from The Lima Bean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Act I: Grief And Care, Part I

**Author's Note:**

> No one uses LJ anymore, but somehow, after four years, this fic still gets love -- I thought it deserved a place that's easier to find. Thank you for the support!
> 
>  **From my original Author's Note:** Biggest thankyous to [](http://colfer.livejournal.com/profile)[**colfer**](http://colfer.livejournal.com/) and [](http://aimmyarrowshigh.livejournal.com/profile)[**aimmyarrowshigh**](http://aimmyarrowshigh.livejournal.com/) for holding my hands for the past _year_ since I started writing this. Also I have a [#recordstoreblaine tag](http://glycerineclown.tumblr.com/tagged/recordstoreblaine) for this fic on my [tumblr](http://glycerineclown.tumblr.com/), if you want to see things (porn) that inspired me, reference materials, character tidbits, and other stuff.

_I used to think that maybe if I just had intimacy, I could be content to live without sex. That as long as I had good friends—people I could feel the presence of, really communicate with and carry no fear of judgment from—that I wouldn’t have to get off with any of them in order to be happy._

_Had I expressed this to Blaine, he would have told me, in an entirely objective way, that that was settling when I shouldn’t have to. That I was depriving myself, that my own feelings would hurt me in the end._

_I guess what it came down to is that I felt that way before the opportunity arose for me to have both._

_It took a long time for us to see things on the same page. We were coming from different ends of the book, and when we met, I was trying to feel less blank. Less pale. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Blaine was ink—but maybe he helped me fit my fingers around the pen. And then I wrote about him, and about myself._

_He was wary but warm, and I was seventeen, and took readily and eagerly everything he offered._

_Obviously._

 

 

ACT I: Grief and Care

**November**

Tina started it.

We had just ducked out of my favorite local thrift shop, looking for my latest reinvention—I hadn’t been as successful as I’d hoped, but Tina had found a military jacket she’d adored that fit her perfectly—and wandered into the new-and-used record store two doors down, Trax, clutching nearly-empty cups of coffee.

“Whoa, check it out,” she’d hissed. “Marlon Brando, two o’clock.”

Humoring her, I turned to look.

‘Marlon Brando,’ apparently, was a dark-haired dreamboat, talking animatedly to a customer a head taller than him in front of a rack of new vinyl. I smirked at Tina. “They say Brando liked men, you know.”

She squeezed my arm and darted off to the Pop/Rock section, leaving me next to the compilations and soundtracks. I ran my fingers over the jewel cases, flipping through the dividers to find _Across The Universe_ , but the section was empty.

“Can I help you find anything?” It was the dreamboat, of course, standing next to me, smiling, his hair gelled back and shiny. _Blaine Anderson_ , his nametag read, pinned to a very well-fitted maroon polo that brought out his eyes, arms—brought out his everything. _General Manager_.

“No, thank you, just browsing,” I told him, mostly out of habit and nerves than anything else.

Coffee was the only thing I bought that day, but I would be back.

 

 

He was turning up the music on the stereo behind the counter the second time I came in, and I smiled at the old Cole Porter tune, humming along as I strolled down the aisles, more prepared with a mental list of what I wanted than I’d been that day with Tina.

After ten minutes of deliberation I had a pile of three: Patti LuPone’s _Les Mouches_ live album, the 40th anniversary edition of _Judy at Carnegie Hall_ , and Katy Perry’s candy-colored _Teenage Dream_.

“Hi there—question,” I started, putting my index finger up.

Blaine set down the clipboard he was looking at, and smiled as he stepped towards me.

I showed him the CDs. “Which one should I get?”

Blaine snorted down at them, his cheeks pinking a little bit. “Are you hitting on me?”

“What?” My eyes went wide, panicking, and he laughed, putting his hand out reassuringly.

“No—it’s okay, I just mean, I love all of these. You have excellent taste. Man after my own heart.” His eyes were bright, all his attention on me. I shook my head and sighed, and felt myself flush. “In answer to your question,” he continued, “Honestly, if you have to pick one, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but pirate Katy before you spend money on it.” He moved that one to the bottom of the stack and held up Judy Garland. “The energy of this album is amazing, it always cheers me up.”

“And Patti?”

“The sound quality isn’t very good, but she’s got a hell of a set of pipes,” he said, raising his eyebrows.

“So, Judy then?” I asked with a grin.

He nodded. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Kurt.”

He shook my hand. “Blaine.” He gestured to his nametag, and then to the two albums we had decided against. “Would you like for me to put those away for you?”

“That’s all right, I can find it.”

 

 

I was only pretending to shop the third time I came into Trax, which turned out to be fine—he had picked something out for me.

Blaine waved to me from behind the main counter, and then bent down, opening a cabinet to pull something out. When I reached the register, he smiled. “This came in the other day with someone selling a bunch of their old records, and it made me think of you.”

It was original, obviously, but with very little wear in the corners, the colors bright—Rodgers and Hammerstein’s _The Sound Of Music_ on vinyl. Someone had taken care of this, tucked it away for years. I grinned as he slid it towards me across the counter—and it had made him think of _me_. “Oh, wow,” I said softly, running my fingers down the edges of the cover.

“You like it?”

Bouncing on my toes, I met his eyes as mine lit up. _Don’t fucking gush, Kurt Elizabeth._ “God, Julie Andrews could sing to me forever. I just watched _Victor/Victoria_ for the thousandth time last week. How much?”

“Thirteen.”

“Really? Thank you.”

He nodded, and I reached for my wallet. As Blaine rang me up, one of his co-workers chortled in our direction, but Blaine ignored him, leaning toward me on his elbows and tapping his fingers on the counter. “Hey, listen—this might be a little out of left field, but do you want to come back tomorrow, let me buy you some coffee?”

I studied him carefully—he was biting his lip, looking at me _like he was nervous_ —and I choked back a laugh, my heart thumping in my chest. “S-sure, okay,” I said finally.

“The Lima Bean, across the street? Four o’clock?”

I nodded, and he handed me my receipt and change, his smile broad, charming. It was working, whatever he was doing, and I walked out to my car with the record in a plastic bag, my face mirroring his.

 

 

The clock in the Navigator read 4:07 when I pulled up to the coffee shop the next day, and I checked myself hurriedly in the rearview mirror before grabbing my messenger bag from the empty seat beside me and yanking my keys from the ignition.

Blaine was sitting at a table facing the door when I walked in, but he didn’t have a cup yet. He stood, leaving his jacket on the back of the chair, and smiled as he approached me. We migrated towards the line, and his fingers brushed against my elbow.

“What do you drink?” he asked.

I peered down at where he was touching me before raising my eyes to answer him—my mind went a bit blank, and I had to take a breath before I could settle on the words. “Grande nonfat mocha, please.”

Blaine ordered for the two of us, handing the barista a ten-dollar bill, and we shuffled off to the side to wait. I thanked him softly, but he batted his hand at the air, collecting the sugar packets and stir stick that he wanted, and soon our drinks were up.

“Sorry I’m a bit late, I had to take a shower and change,” I told him as we sat down at the table he’d claimed earlier.

“How come?” he asked, taking his eyes off me for a second to remove the lid from his cup and tear open one of the sugars. “Not that I’m complaining.”

I sat there staring at him, and then at the table, wondering if that had been a compliment, but chose to ignore it. _How to phrase this._ “A bunch of the jocks at school throw slushies at the freaks.”

He almost dropped the packet into his coffee. “You’re still in high school?”

I realized then—this could be a deal-breaker, he might not have even spoken to me if he had known. “Yeah, unfortunately,” I said, biting my lip.

Blaine froze for a moment, his eyes on the table, but he hid his expression quickly, and then sighed. “I guess I’ve forgotten a little bit.”

“What?”

“I, uh, I spent all my undergrad time in the queer center,” he said, finally pouring the sugar into his coffee. “There was a lot of support and outreach work on campus and stuff.”

 _What?_ “Where did you go to school?”

“Ohio State. Bleed scarlet and grey.”

“Then what the hell are you doing in Lima? Everyone’s dying to get out of here.”

Blaine smiled sadly. “Including you, it sounds like.”

“I’d like to walk down the street without wondering if the people around me are above lynching yet.”

He nodded, pressing his lips together. “I guess I was spoiled by Columbus a little bit. High school was still hard, though, I mean, of course, but there was never... _beverages_ thrown. Jesus.”

“And I ask again what you’re doing here willingly.”

“Well, the sister store wanted to transfer me over, and my boss said the lower cost of living would do me good,” he said, stirring his coffee and replacing the lid. “I was holding on by my fingernails under all those student loans, couldn’t say no.”

“Huh.” I didn’t really know what to say to that. “I, um... I don’t know anyone out of the closet in this town. At least no one around our age.”

It was Blaine’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “No one?”

I shook my head, turning my cup in my hands. “My friend Rachel has two dads, but I’ve met them, like, _once_.”

Blaine looked down at the table before meeting my eyes again. “Well, now there’s me.”

I nodded, smiling, and he pulled his phone out.

“Listen, I want you to call me if you get in a jam, or you just want someone to talk to, or whatever, okay? I’m serious, anything,” he said. “Making gay friends was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

I fished my phone out of my bag, and we traded numbers across the table. _Friends_. Not a date, then, but—I’d made an impression.

 

 

I texted Blaine that weekend, after asking Dad where I could find Mama’s old record player. **_Our turntable’s busted. :(_** It seemed like an innocent enough statement, and relevant enough to merit opening the conversation.

 ** _I’ve got one_** was his reply a few minutes later, and then, **_Sunday afternoon?_**.

I’d been filling in quite a bit at the garage in Dad’s absence after his heart attack, doing routine stuff and keeping the place organized. Hummel Tires & Lube felt strangely empty without my dad’s presence, but the guys working there, who had been in his employ since I was a kid, were upbeat about it and didn’t let me sink too far into my own worry.

**_I can’t, I’ve got work._ **

We ended up scheduling time for me to come over to Blaine’s apartment the following Wednesday after glee club. He lived in a complex not too far from the public library, so when he told me the name of it, I knew I wouldn’t have to look up the address. I was nervous, though—I couldn’t remember the last time I had been invited to a guy’s house aside from a few glee club parties, not even to work on a group project. Walking from my car and up the steps to his apartment had my eyes darting around, adjusting my clothes even as I was beaming.

Blaine was holding a rearing brindle-and-white boxer back by the collar when he opened the door and stepped aside to let me in. I ducked inside, and nodded to the dog. “Who’s this?”

“This is Stevie,” Blaine said, smiling, and closed the door before he crouched in front of the wriggling animal, who promptly jumped up to lick his ears. “You cool with dogs?”

“As long as they don’t shed too much,” I said, setting the record on a chair and reaching up to unzip my coat. “Is he named for Nicks or Wonder?”

Blaine laughed, and I grinned back. “ _She_ , though I haven’t decided yet.” He took the dog’s face between both of his hands. “You’d like to be a Wonderdog, wouldn’t you, Stevie?” She huffed softly, and I chuckled as Blaine straightened up, taking my coat from me and hanging it up on the coat stand by the door.

Blaine’s library was _massive_ ; he followed my eyes to the bookcases along the wall, teeming with music. “I used to work as a DJ on the side, in Columbus, weddings and house parties and stuff,” he said. I let Stevie smell my hand before I stepped up to look at the titles. “Do you want something to drink?”

“Water would be great, thank you,” I told him. The shelves went floor-to-ceiling along one wall, stuffed, only a few cases resting at a diagonal. An electronic keyboard was on the floor, no stand in sight. “I guess working in a record store has its perks. Do you get a discount?”

“Yep,” he said, opening the refrigerator. “I’ve got a few hundred pounds of vinyl sitting in my parents’ basement in boxes right now too.”

“When did you start working there?”

“When I was nineteen. Never left. Five years later, clerk to manager?”

 _He’s twenty-four_. “Not too bad at all.” Blaine came back from the kitchen and handed me a sealed bottle of water. I thanked him softly, looking closer at the CDs.

Up on the top shelf, I thought I could make out Christina Aguilera’s _Stripped_ , a few to the right of Frank Sinatra and Boyz II Men. Below them were Elton John and Ella Fitzgerald, then Fiona Apple. Cat Power was near the floor along with Sigur Rós.

“How are these organized?”

Blaine snickered. “Autobiographically. By period in my life.”

I scoffed back at him. “Oh, sure, Mister Poetic.”

“More like, ‘who needs food or clothes when I can buy _music?_ ’” He opened a glass cabinet then, and gestured to the sleek turntable sitting inside it. “Let’s get your Julie Andrews going.”

I retrieved the album from where I’d left it, and Blaine slid the black disc from its cover, fitting it carefully onto the player before lifting the needle and placing it at the outside edge. The music crackled to life, strains of the title track resonating through the speakers, and Blaine and I smiled at each other as Maria began to sing.

Blaine crossed his ankles then and sank slowly to the fake Oriental rug, and Stevie ducked under his arm. They admired the cover art together, while I looked around awkwardly at the couch and coffee table, before sitting down across from him. Stevie abandoned her master and nosed over to me, but before she could slobber all over my pants, I put my hand up.

“Stevie, _sit_.”

Stevie sat on her haunches, her tongue lolling out, and I laughed a little, patting her head and unscrewing the cap from my water.

The nuns were singing now; Blaine was cracking up silently against his fist at the lyrics, and I began to sing along after a few verses. Out of the corner of my eye, Blaine’s head jerked up. I could feel him watching me, but I kept my gaze on the dog, whose head was cocked to the side, listening.

_“But how do you make her stay, and listen to all you say, how do you keep a wave upon the sand?”_

When I finally looked up to gauge Blaine’s reaction near the end of the song, he was looking at me in what appeared to be awe—and I beamed at him as he gaped.

“Wow. Holy _shit_ , Kurt. Please tell me you do something with that voice of yours.”

I blushed under his praise. “I’m in my school’s show choir, we compete with other schools in the area.”

“I bet you’re the star,” Blaine said with a smile.

“No, that would be Rachel—Streisand wannabe, controlling, endlessly irritating—though I have to say that she and I are fairly evenly matched.” Stevie thrust her nose into my hair then, her whole body wagging, and I snorted, pushing at Stevie’s shoulder. “My mother wanted a dog. Dad’s allergic.”

“Some breeds are hypoallergenic,” Blaine supplied. “Maybe you two can win him over.”

The side of my mouth pulled up, and I looked across at him. “She died when I was eight.”

He raised his eyebrows, and then deflated, frowning. “Oh. Can I ask what happened?”

“Car accident. Another driver was on their cell phone.” It was the same assumption everyone always made—it didn’t really bother me anymore, though it hurt more than old relatives asking over and over if I had a girlfriend yet. He didn’t tell me he was sorry, and I didn’t want him to. We kept listening.

Blaine met my eyes during _Sixteen Going On Seventeen_ , and we laughed awkwardly. “This doesn’t remind me of _anything at all_ ,” he said, covering his eyes, and I blushed. “If it matters, this song is _not_ why I saved the album for you.”

 _You need someone older and wiser telling you what to doo-oooh._ I pictured us briefly, dancing together in a glass gazebo during a thunderstorm, if he would deliver telegrams to my father’s house and exchange secret messages with the doorman. “Uh-huh. Just as long as you don’t turn out to be a Nazi.”

Blaine smirked, shaking his head. “I think I might be a bit too gay for that.” He made it look so _easy_ —being accepted, comfortable with himself, and I wondered, enviously, how old he’d been when he came out, what his friends were like, how his parents reacted. We listened to the rest of the record in relative silence, though, and Blaine stood up once to turn it over to side two. During _Edelweiss_ he confessed to having a childhood crush on Christopher Plummer, and I stretched my legs out in front of me on the rug. Stevie rested her head on my thigh.

“I think Stevie has decided that Kurt can stay,” Blaine said absently, smirking at his dog, whose ears quirked up at attention. I petted her neck and agreed.

 

 

I felt it before I heard it—large hands on my shoulders, a steel grip, a full-bodied shove.

“’Sup, homo.”

My heart didn’t have time to sink before my right shoulder had taken most of the impact, my left hand coming out to stop my head from hitting the locker as well.

It was Karofsky, of course, and he nodded with his chin when I met his eyes.

I flinched as someone else stepped up next to me, but I sighed and relaxed when I realized it was just Sam, who was sending a dirty look to Karofsky as he backed away from us. We watched as Karofsky turned around, raising his middle finger above the mass of students.

“Sorry he’s such a dick,” Sam said, shaking his head. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll live,” I told him, and offered a small smile. “Thanks.”

“Yup. I’ve gotta get to class, take it easy,” he said, putting his fist out for me to bump. I did so awkwardly, and Sam smiled back before heading off down the hall.

Blaine and I started talking more regularly after that. He would text me about customer antics and how much his co-workers had grown sick of the _Mary Poppins_ that he had been adding to the in-store music rotation, but when I got tired of texting and just called him in order to better explain the politics behind Sue Sylvester, we ended up talking for almost two hours.

It was _glorious_.

And my dad doesn’t miss a thing.

“So, who’s that you were talking to for so long on the phone last night, Kurt?” he asked, as we cleaned up the shop after closing time.

“Oh... that was my friend Blaine,” I told him, and reached for a wide broom to sweep up the dirt on the floor and dead leaves that had blown in.

“Huh. Is he, y’know, gay?”

I nodded. “Yeah, Dad. But we’re just friends.”

“Oh. Is he in one of your classes or somethin’?” he pressed, picking up a socket wrench and putting it back in its place.

“No. He works at the record store over by The Lima Bean.”

“What, does he go to another high school?”

“No, he’s already got his degree,” I said finally, and concentrated on the pile I was making on the concrete. “He’s the manager of the store.”

Dad raised his eyebrows. “I see. How old’s this guy?”

“Twenty-four.”

“And you get along with him real well.”

I smiled, pausing over the broom. “Yeah, I guess so. We like a lot of the same things.”

“Huh,” Dad said. “I wanna meet him.”

“I’ll have him over after the wedding,” I told him, and he nodded.

 

 

Blaine’s co-workers were David, a dark-skinned boy of about my age, and an older Asian guy, Wes, with a pricing gun attached to his hip. They were arguing about the music playing in the store when I came in to meet Blaine and get coffee. I listened to them as I browsed aimlessly, waiting for Blaine to finish whatever he was doing in the back office so we could walk across the street.

“This music is _depressing_ , Wes. I can’t work. If you want sad, at least put on _blues_ or something, man.”

“Tuesdays are my pick from three to close. Get over it. What you call depressing I call poetry.”

“Yeah, well, I call rap poetry, but I don’t force the Lima squares to shop to it.”

There was another customer in my aisle, mid-thirties probably, with greasy hair and a truly terrible khaki jacket, and I glanced up in time to see him look around quickly before shoving a CD down the front of his jeans. David and Wes were distracted with other things, and the customer was back to casually browsing the racks. I eyed him carefully—he wouldn’t have a straight shot to the exit, the aisles were perpendicular.

This was a perfect opportunity for me to earn some solidarity.

Edging over to where Wes stood, I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned, and I jerked my head in the perp’s direction and whispered, “Shoplifter.”

Wes nodded—“David. Lock the front.”—and started across the store, the lanyard around his neck swinging. “Blaine!” he shouted toward the back room. “Blaine!”

I started to follow Wes before hanging back, and as David secured the front doors, Wes approached the man cautiously. The thief stiffened, and his eyes went wide, knowing he’d been caught.

“We should really get an intercom system in here,” Blaine said as he came out. “So unprofessional. What’s up?”

“Kurt just called out a shoplifter,” Wes said, looking the guy up and down.

“Oh, boy. This _is_ exciting.” Blaine settled a hand on my shoulder as he passed me, squeezing gently, before stepping up to the man, who had a few good inches on him. “Good afternoon, sir,” he started, sticking out his hand for the guy to shake, who stared and did nothing. “Blaine Anderson, I’m the manager here. Are you currently concealing anything from this store on your person?”

Silence.

Blaine cocked his head to the side, chuckling. “I don’t feel like dealing with cops today. Do you? You can hand over what you’ve got on you, or we can call someone to do it for you. I’m sure the Lima PD would be more than hap—”

Groaning, the guy reached back into his pants and pulled out the CD, handing it to Blaine.

“Ke$ha, really? Get some standards.” Blaine sighed, shaking his head as David and I laughed behind him. “Arms out please, and don’t move.” He nodded to David then. “Check him.”

David didn’t find anything else when he patted him down. When Blaine let the guy put his hands down, he brought him over to the main counter and asked to see his driver’s license.

Wes patted me on the back. “Well done, Kurt. Thanks.”

“Blaine will probably buy you coffee for life now,” David chuckled as he backed away from us, looking over at Blaine and heading across the store to help him escort the man out.

After Blaine closed the front doors firmly after the would-be criminal, he turned and barreled over to me with a grin and a hug. I froze for a second before relaxing and wrapping my arms around his shoulders, and closed my eyes, breathing him in. “Hi, Blaine.”

“Thank you for the assistance. You still up for coffee, crimefighter?” Blaine asked softly, and I nodded, loosening my hold on him. He didn’t step away immediately, letting his hands graze over my ribs.

“That was pretty badass,” I told him, laughing through my nose as we turned back towards the doors. “Your delivery was just... perfection.”

Blaine shrugged, beaming. “I’ve witnessed a lot of shoplifts. That was cake.”

 

 

Principal Figgins was multi-tasking when I knocked on the doorframe of his office later that week.

“Ah, Mr. Hummel,” he said, looking up from a notebook and calculator. “How can I help you today?”

I sat in the chair opposite him, laying my bag by my feet. “I... I was hoping you could do something about David Karofsky and the guys who shove me around. It’s getting out of control and I don’t feel safe.”

“What would you have me do?”

I gaped at him. “I don’t know, tell them to stop, threaten them with suspension.”

Figgins barely even looked up. “I can’t punish or suspend students unless you can provide me with adequate proof of their intentional violence or maltreatment.”

“So if you bring him in here and he says he didn’t mean to—to shout slurs at me, to trip me in the hallway, you’ll let him go? He _terrifies_ me.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hummel—with altercations such as this I recommend using the tried and true ‘I-statements’ wherein you explain how you feel, and say, ‘ _when you do this, I feel such-and-such_ ,’ so that the other person can perhaps walk a kilometer in your shoes...”

 _This wasn’t third grade._ Karofsky’s _feelings_ could go suck a bag of unwanted dicks as far as I was concerned. It was so difficult to hold my tongue as I stood in the middle of his diatribe and walked out, heading to lunch—a salad that I would mostly just pretend to eat enough of for Tina’s benefit, and saltines from the soup bar for my inevitable nausea, while Rachel chattered on about frivolous things.

 

 

I held Stevie’s leash as Blaine locked the door to his apartment. She was one hundred percent ready for the events to come, as evidenced by the rear end that was bouncing between the siding and my knee.

“I try to jog with her most mornings early, before work,” he said, taking her back from me as we turned from the door and descended the few stairs to the sidewalk. “But there’s a park up here that we go to sometimes as well.”

Stevie wore a full doggy grin, her tongue hanging out as she pranced around Blaine’s legs, twisting up the leash. Blaine sighed, telling her to sit before untangling himself. A tennis ball fell from the kangaroo pocket of his sweatshirt, and he bent to pick it up.

“Did you get her as a puppy?” I asked as we got moving again.

“No, she’s a rescue dog,” Blaine said, letting out some slack on the leash. “There’s a stigma around white boxers, because so many of them are born deaf. It’s really sad.”  
  
“What causes it?”

“Some kind of genetic thing. _Heel_ , Stevie,” he said firmly as she dragged forward, tugging. “You don’t get to pretend you can’t hear me, sweet cheeks. Chill.”

I snorted next to him, and Blaine grinned, squinting against the sun.

“I swear she knows,” he said, as Stevie slowed down to walk beside him. There was a park only a couple of blocks away, vacant for the most part, and when we got there he looked around, walking to a bench before unclipping the dog’s leash. “We’re not really supposed to do this here, I don’t think, but I feel bad leaving her cooped up all the time. One day I’ll have a yard.” Blaine took the tennis ball from his pocket and waved it in front of her. “Stevie, look what I have.” Then he turned to me. “You want first throw? Before it gets all slimy?”

I shook my head, and Stevie splayed her front legs out, her butt wagging, eyes on the ball, and barked.

Blaine raised his hand as if to throw it, and Stevie took off backwards and turned away, before looking around and focusing back on Blaine, who still held the ball. The dog barked again, and Blaine threw it for real, towards a couple of trees on the park’s lawn. Stevie darted after it, and we sat down on the bench.

“So, how are things with that guy who was giving you so much trouble?” he asked softly.

“Karofsky? Same old crap.” I sighed as I crossed my legs, stuck between bitter and just drained. “The school won’t do anything about it.”

“C’mon, bring it back,” Blaine called as Stevie reached the ball and grabbed it in her jaws. Then he turned back to me. “Is it physical, is he hurting you?”

“Shoving doesn’t count at McKinley, I guess.”

Blaine grimaced. “That’s serious harassment, Kurt. That’s not okay.”

“I know. He’s enormous and I just... I’m on edge everywhere I go.” Leaning forward over my knees, I rested my chin on my hand.

Stevie loped back to us, set the ball at Blaine’s feet, and sneezed. Blaine threw it again, farther this time, and sighed as the dog gave chase, before he slumped back, shaking his head. “That’s just... if the administration won’t do anything, you _need_ call him out on that shit. It’s easy to torment people who don’t stand up for themselves, Kurt.”

Blaine brought his hand down on my shoulder after he said that—not even hard, just suddenly—and without meaning to I flinched away; he looked pained as I relaxed again and rubbed my eyes.

“Sorry,” Blaine murmured, squeezing my shoulder and smoothing his hand over the middle of my back.

I shook my head and leaned back, letting him put his arm around me. “Reflex.”

 

 

Chasing after Karofsky and confronting him in the boys’ locker room was about the worst idea I could have possibly come up with—something about his _attraction_ to me was so much worse, so much more terrifying than outright hatred. I wanted to permanently erase the memory of him touching me like that, but it felt impossible.

I fought back tears as I trudged across the school parking lot with my bag, not bothering to tell anyone I was ditching. Pulling my knees up in the front seat of my car, I locked the doors with shaking fingers, and called Blaine. I had some difficulty with the touch screen of my phone, and wiped my nose as I finally heard it start to ring. He answered with a soft _hey_ , and my breath shook and I just _lost it_ , quiet, ugly sobs making my throat ache as I curled in on myself.

“Blaine, I tried, I confronted him, and—oh, god, Blaine, I don’t...”

“Whoa, whoa, are you hurt? Do you need me to come get you?”

“No, no, that’s okay—I’m fine,” I managed.

“ _Where are you?_ ”

I sniffed heavily, hugging myself. “Sitting in my car at school.”

“I’m at home, Kurt. You can come over if you need to.”

I sighed, considering that.

“I’m going to worry if you don’t come over, Kurt,” he amended, and I nodded even though he couldn’t see me.

Blaine was in sweatpants and a plain grey t-shirt when he opened the door, his dark hair mussed and curly, and I let his arms gather me into a hug, burying my face in his neckline. Taking my bag and setting it on the floor, he led us to the couch, and I curled up beside him, wiping under my eyes, stuttering apologies.

Shushing me, Blaine ran his hands up and down my arms. “It’s okay. You’re safe, Kurt,” he whispered. “Tell me what happened.”

The images were still so vivid. Steadying my breath took more time than I thought it would, and I tried to will my hands to stop shaking. “Karofsky... I followed him into the locker room after he shoved me, and yelled at him that he couldn’t change me, and he just...” I looked down at my lap and shook my head, choking a little, my throat seizing up.

“Whoa, _breathe_ , Kurt,” Blaine said softly, his warm hands wrapping around the back of my neck. I clutched at one of his forearms, the hair on his arm coarse against my palm. “What did he do?”

Blaine’s voice felt like a salve, and I sighed, leaning into him as I hung my head. “He grabbed me and _kissed_ me. And I pushed him away, but he tried again and I—and then he ran out—” I was staring at my lap, and I felt Blaine’s hands leave my skin. When I glanced up, his eyes were fixed on me, wide open.

“Kurt, you need to tell someone, that’s—”

“No. I out him and I’m _dead_ ,” I said firmly, shaking my head. “And my dad doesn’t need that kind of stress right now.”

He sighed, resting his hands in his own lap. “Okay. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it yet.”

Blaine nodded. “Well, it’s noon. Have you eaten yet today?” I shook my head, and his deft fingers wrapped around my forearm, kneading the muscles with his thumb. “Pick a movie out of the TV cabinet. I’m making you a turkey sandwich and you’re going to eat it. Okay?”

Smiling, I squeezed Blaine’s hand, thanking him softly, and he nodded before standing and walking into the cramped kitchen. “No mayo,” I called after him.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

 

 

I fell asleep on his couch most of the way through the movie. When my eyes opened again, Blaine was sitting in an armchair a few feet away. He was hunched over, his elbows on his knees, hands folded until he lifted one to scrub over his face.

I watched him silently, not moving from my position, and then I remembered why I was there. _What Karofsky did._

Stevie’s collar jingled as she got up from lying on the floor and approached him, nosing under his hands. Smiling softly, Blaine tugged gently on her ears and smoothed his fingers over her coat before pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “Good girl,” he murmured, and Stevie panted happily in his face, licking Blaine’s ears. He squirmed away from her, rubbing his ear on his shoulder.

That was nonromantic, of course, but it was what a kiss is supposed to be, I thought— _loving_ , or at the very least _affectionate_ , and exactly what Karofsky _wasn’t_. Being jealous of a dog had to be a new low.

Blaine looked up as I turned onto my back. “Hey.”

“What time is it?” I asked, clearing my throat.

“About two-thirty,” he said, standing. “I was going to wake you up soon. How are you feeling?”

I sat up. “Okay. I should—I should go home. Sorry for falling asleep.”

Blaine nodded. “Don’t worry about it.” He looked back toward the door and located my messenger bag, setting it on the coffee table in front of me. I unzipped the front pocket and pulled out my phone. There were texts from Mercedes and Rachel asking why I wasn’t in glee, and a missed call from my dad.

 _I had skipped class._ My heart sank. “Gotta run damage control,” I said with a sigh.

Hitching my bag over my shoulder, I turned to Blaine, stepping around the table to stand in front of him, meeting his eyes.

“Thank you,” I said. “For listening, and... for being here. I don’t know what I would’ve...”

Blaine nodded, his fingers reaching out to touch my shoulder. I felt myself step towards him, my arms wrapping around his neck before I realized what I was doing, but Blaine hugged me back, so I tucked my chin over his shoulder and closed my eyes for a few peaceful seconds.

“Is there anything that I can do?” Blaine asked as he released me, his hands lingering as they slid down my arms.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, if you don’t mind my asking—and I totally understand that you feel violated, or like this was forced on you, but why did it... _upset_ you so much?”

Pressing my lips together, I adjusted the strap on my shoulder and considered that. “It was my first kiss from a boy. I wanted, was hoping for... something _so_ different.” _It wasn’t you._

Blaine nodded. “I’m so sorry, Kurt.”

I pulled my keys out of my bag. “Yeah. I’ll, uh, I’ll see you later.”

 

 

“Do I even need to ask if you like _RENT?_ ” Blaine asked two days later, over coffee.

In another life I might have launched myself across the table at him, but “of course you don’t,” was what I told him, scoffing.

“Okay, good,” he said. “Someone from the community playhouse just came by the store asking if they could put a flyer for their production in the window. Should I get us tickets?”

As if I could ever say no to off-Broadway and _Blaine_.

We went that weekend, to an eight o’clock performance. To my abject horror, Rachel and her dads were in attendance, and while the house lights were still up, I dragged Blaine to the other side of the auditorium, until I realized the seats were assigned and we couldn’t just sit in the back corner for a few minutes and hide from her.

I faced Blaine in the aisle, my back to Rachel, and scrubbed over my eyebrows with one hand, groaning softly.

“What’s up?” he asked, cocking his head to the side.

She appeared behind me after a moment, in the blaze of glory that always follows her when she’s in her element. “Hi Kurt! Fancy seeing you here!”

I turned on my heel, forcing a smile. “Rachel! Indeed.”

“Aren’t you excited?! My dads donate to the theatre annually, so of course we got our tickets back in February.” Blaine chuckled from beside me, and Rachel looked at him sharply, and back to me. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. My name is Rachel Berry, I’m in glee club with Kurt.”

Throwing on a winning smile, Blaine shook her hand. “Blaine Anderson. I, uh, run a record store over on 42nd.”

“Pleasure to meet you.” She narrowed her eyes at me, and was about to open her mouth, no doubt to grill me on how we knew each other, when the lights began to dim, and one of her dads called her back over.

“Enjoy the show,” Blaine said quickly, and I sighed as Rachel nodded politely and skipped away to sit with them. “So _that’s_ Rachel.”

“Yeah. I can only imagine what theories she’ll be cooking up tonight.”

“What, will there be ten versions of that exchange tomorrow?”

I groaned back at him. “They’re going to make it sound so scandalous, oh my god.”

Smirking, Blaine reached into his pocket to check the tickets for our seats, and I felt his hand on my back a moment later, guiding me up the aisle to our row.

“Thank you for this,” I said in his ear as we sat down. “I needed a distraction.”


	2. Act I: Grief And Care, Part II

I was ambushed by women in glee on Monday, Mercedes leading the pack.  
  
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going out with someone? Why did I have to hear about it from _Rachel_?”  
  
“Wait, Kurt, you actually put the moves on that guy from Trax?” Tina said next, a huge grin on her face. “Isn’t he like, in his twenties?”  
  
“Whoa, whoa, wait,” Santana cut in as she filed her nails next to the piano. “Why didn’t I hear that Hummel’s boning an older man?”  
  
“Time out!” I finally had to shout, rubbing my temples. “Blaine’s just a friend, and yes, he’s gay, but we’re not dating.”  
  
“Uh-huh,” Santana smirked. “Whatever you say.”  
  
“How did he do that?” Brittany asked softly, turning to her. “The only guy in my twenties is Andrew Jackson.”  
  
  
  
Blaine’s existence in my life felt so alien in comparison to high school—he looked at me like I mattered to him, and he picked up on small things. I had learned quickly that Blaine liked to communicate through touch. That was new to me; I had come to associate touch from boys with pain, but Blaine’s was surprising and warm, connected to a smile or a look of concern. He could squeeze my upper arm gently and I’d know he’d be right back, or slide his hand over the small of my back to ask how I was feeling. He was smaller than me too, just enough to be strong but not hulking, not naturally threatening, but still solid.  
  
Blaine was the most refreshing person I had ever met, and the knowledge that I trusted him, that I wanted to allow myself to be vulnerable with him, to let him tear my guard down, was a bit terrifying. Sometimes just thinking about him allowed me to escape for a few minutes, but it was never for long enough.  
  
Trying to concentrate on getting to class and being smashed bodily into the lockers by some sweaty meathead with the hots for me, and having a Master Lock dig directly into my shoulder blade—staggering around, bent double, trying to get my footing again and knocking books out of someone’s arms by accident—  
  
And to think, people try to say that this was the life I _chose_ for myself.  
  
I’d be feeling that one for a while.  
  
  
  
“Have you told anyone what happened? About what you did?” Karofsky demanded the next day, looming over me in the hall, his eyes menacing, dangerous.  
  
I opened my mouth to argue, but quickly shut it, and shook my head.  
  
“It better stay that way,” he growled. “Or I’ll _kill_ you.” He slammed my locker door shut then, narrowly missing my fingers, and I jumped, every muscle in my body tensing. Karofsky smirked as he stalked away, and I tried to sigh but it caught short and turned into a half-sob. I squeezed my eyes shut before turning to open my locker again.  
  
I made it through the remainder of my day’s classes in a daze, an extra mental ache added to the fatigue that had spread from my shoulders to the middle of my back, and skipped glee because it just wasn’t worth it. None of them would be able to help me with this.  
  
I stopped by Blaine’s store on the way home, needing to feel him, but I sat in the parking lot in my Navigator for a good ten minutes gripping the steering wheel before I got out.  
  
Blaine was up high on a stepladder updating the _Upcoming Releases_ chalkboard when I opened the door. He turned and, upon seeing me, grinned. “Hey, you, how’re things?” Blaine finished the line he was writing and looked back down at me, and as he took in my posture, his expression immediately changed.  
  
I crossed my arms in front of my chest, looking down at my shoes. The ladder rattled as he descended, and he handed the chalk to David, dusting off his hands and murmuring something to him before sidestepping a display and moving into my personal space. “Something’s wrong,” Blaine said.  
  
I nodded, tears springing to my eyes, and when he tried to wrap his arms around my shoulders, I cried out, cringing away from him, pressing my fist to my mouth.  
  
Blaine pulled back right away, his eyes searching my face, hands ghosting over my forearms. “Kurt. What happened?” When I didn’t respond, Blaine sighed, pulling my hand from my face with gentle fingers. “Please tell me.”  
  
“Karofsky threatened to kill me if I told anyone what he did,” I whispered.  
  
Blaine’s eyes widened as he processed that, and his lips set into a firm line. “Wes!” he called over his shoulder.  
  
Wes poked his head out of the back room. “Yeah?”  
  
“You done going through that new shipment yet?”  
  
“Almost.”  
  
“When you’re done, go through the crates we got yesterday and price them for me, please. If there’s any you’re not sure about, just set them aside and I’ll look at them tomorrow.”  
  
“Wait, Blaine—I’m sorry, what are you—” It wasn’t my intention to have him leave work for me.  
  
“Do you need me right now?” he asked firmly. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”  
  
I said nothing, just stood there, stuck between _everything hurts_ and _how can he care that much, what did I do to—_.  
  
“Who’s closing tonight?” Blaine spoke over his shoulder again.  
  
David raised his hand. “That’d be me.”  
  
Blaine reached into his pants pocket and tossed David the keys, which he caught easily. “Thanks, man. If Donovan calls again, tell ‘em I’ll get back to them by Monday.”  
  
He took my hand then, and in retrospect it was probably the safest place he could have touched me without risk of hurting, but as he said a soft _c’mon_ in my ear and walked with me toward the doors, I let myself focus on his proximity, on the way his fingers felt, curled softly around the back of my hand.  
  
“Your place or mine?” Blaine asked in the parking lot as he looked between our cars.  
  
I tugged my keys out of the pocket of my jacket, my hand shaking slightly, and he took them from me. “I’ll drive. You can bring me back here later.”  
  
I slid into the passenger seat of the Navigator, pulling my messenger bag into my lap, and Blaine started the car before sitting back and adjusting the mirrors.  
  
“If I take you home like I should,” he asked gently, “will you show and tell me everything, or are you going to be too worried about who all’s in the house?”  
  
“It’s empty right now,” I whispered. “My dad’ll be at the shop.”  
  
Blaine nodded, swallowing, and shifted into reverse. He didn’t say a word until we were pulling into my driveway, and his silence made me anxious. I wondered what he was thinking about, if he was angry, if he was angry with _me_. After I had locked the door behind us and put my bag down by the stairs, we walked into the kitchen, and Blaine turned to face me.  
  
“Show me, now. The bruises.”  
  
“Wh—”  
  
“You almost started crying when I tried to hug you earlier,” he interrupted. “That was _pain_ , not fear.” His tone changed then, softened. “I need to see them, Kurt.”  
  
I closed my eyes and sighed. I hadn’t been shirtless in front of anyone besides my dad and the football team in years, and that time with Dad had been a fluke while changing into my coveralls in the back room of the auto shop. _This was a guy that I was interested in._  
  
“It’s just me,” he said, tender again. “It’s all right. I want to help.”  
  
I lifted my fingers to the top buttons of the wine-colored linen shirt I had worn that day, chosen mostly for color but also because I wouldn’t have to raise my arms above my head to get it off. The buttons seemed to take forever, and Blaine watched me carefully. I felt so scrutinized, like he was taking in as many details as he could, and wished he would look away, because this was so far from erotic. He moved around to my back after I had untucked the shirt from my waistband, and drew it down my shoulders for me. He laid it over the backrest of a nearby chair, and rested his hand gently on my waist as he examined my shoulders.  
  
I knew exactly what was there.  
  
Gingerly, he grazed his fingertips over the worst of them, purple and ugly on my shoulderblade, one small deep impression and most of a semicircle. “What was this?”  
  
“Combination lock. I slammed up against it yesterday.”  
  
“Jesus Christ, Kurt,” he said, his voice breaking. “Let’s see the rest.”  
  
I showed him the green-and-yellow on my upper arm, stripes from hitting a locker vent, and the scab right below my elbow. There was another deep purple bruise over my left kneecap where I’d hit the hallway’s tile floor hard, but Blaine didn’t have to know about that. If he thought he was getting my pants off with the abuse from Karofsky in mind, he had another think coming.  
  
“I shouldn’t be the one you come to about this,” Blaine said, shaking his head. “You need to tell your dad, and you need to tell the faculty. If I beat the shit out of this guy, I’ll be arrested for assaulting a minor.”  
  
“You wouldn’t be able to do it anyway. He’s twice your size.”  
  
“Promise me you’ll tell your dad,” he said firmly, ignoring what I’d said.  
  
“But Karofsky said—”  
  
“And tell Finn too, because he’s at school with you.”  
  
Sighing, I covered my face with my hands. “I don’t know...”  
  
“You know what, never mind. What time does your dad get home?”  
  
Looking back up, I glared, knowing exactly where he was going with this. “I’m not five years old, Blaine. I can deal with it myself.”  
  
“No. I think it’s pretty clear at this point that you can’t.”  
  
“Oh, thanks a lot,” I scowled, and his face fell.  
  
“Kurt. Please. I’m trying to do the right thing here.” Blaine hung his head, his hands reaching for mine. “And I... I need you to be safe. Can’t I please hang out here and we can talk to your dad when he gets back?” When I sighed and nodded, Blaine smiled gratefully and helped me back on with my shirt.  
  
“I can’t out him, though, Blaine,” I said, as I worked the buttons closed again. “It would ruin his life and that shouldn’t be my choice.”  
  
“But isn’t sexual harassment something else you could have to say against him? Now that we know that’s what this is about, hating himself because he _likes you_ —”  
  
“That doesn’t leave a visual mark,” I insisted, shaking my head, though hearing him put it in those words made it feel so much more real. “I—I can’t prove it to the school board, and if it’s all the same to you I’d really rather not mention that part to my father.”  
  
“It’s not all the same to me,” he said softly, and frowned.  
  
“Blaine, please,” I said, rolling my shoulders and cringing as my muscles protested. “I’m the gay kid in this equation regardless of whether he is. I want my sexuality as far from the table here as possible. It just... it makes everything look bad, okay?” To my relief, he sighed and nodded instead of arguing.  
  
“Do you have some cream or something that we can put on your shoulder?”  
  
Blaine followed me into the downstairs powder room, to the medicine cabinet. I removed the bottle of witch hazel from the shelf and showed it to him, then ducked under the sink to grab the bag of cotton balls. Blaine took them from me as I closed the cabinet, and ushered me back into the kitchen. I removed my shirt again at his prompting, and after placing it on the countertop, sat down on one of the barstools tucked beneath.  
  
“What you really need’s a good massage,” Blaine said as he unscrewed the cap. “Break up all this blood.” He covered the mouth of the bottle with a cotton ball, swishing it upside-down. “I’m gonna try and do this as softly as I can, okay?”  
  
I nodded, and felt his left hand settle on my shoulder before his right began spreading the witch hazel over my skin, in small circles. Blaine’s breath blew against my back, and I shivered slightly, hyperaware of him. I hissed when he pushed in a little too far, and Blaine pulled away immediately, apologizing. Taking a deep breath in, I arched my back as he continued, and laced my fingers together on the counter. The pain was dull, consistent.  
  
Blaine seated himself on the barstool to my right when he finished with my shoulderblade, and began to address my upper arm with a second cotton ball. “Thank you for letting me do this,” he murmured, glancing up at my face, and I nodded.  
  
No one had patched me up like this in years, probably not since I scraped up my knuckles on a bike in middle school and Dad had taken care of it since it had been on my writing hand. I still believe a lot of that was guilt though, since he was the one who insisted I learn to ride.  
  
From about seventh grade on I had actively hidden the rest from my father, the stuff other kids did, but I could sometimes tell that he knew, or at least suspected, and I remember his reaction to all the dry cleaning bills back in sophomore year when I was getting dumpster-tossed daily.  
  
Tears sprang forward again, and I sniffed. Blaine removed his hands from my skin, and I shook my head, rubbing my fingers over his knee. “You can keep going.”  
  
“What is it?” he asked, searching my face.  
  
I sighed heavily. “Just... I’ve felt so alone in all this. No one’s really cared in a while.” I turned to look at him, and Blaine put the cotton down before raising his left hand up into my hair at the back of my neck and pressing his lips above my ear. “I know you do,” I told him softly, closing my eyes. “Thank you.”  
  
I went down to my room when he was done, and found an undershirt that I didn’t mind the witch hazel getting on. The garage door opened while I was down there, and I squeezed my eyes tight together before heading back up quickly so Blaine wouldn’t have to explain why he was sitting in the kitchen by himself. Carole was with my dad, I could hear them both in the laundry room.  
  
Blaine was still seated when I got back to the kitchen, and I squeezed his arm as I breezed past on my way to the sink. “You want something to drink?”  
  
“Water, please,” he said, right as my dad walked in, holding a bag of takeout, Chinese if my nose was correct.  
  
Blaine stood, and I pulled the Brita pitcher out of the refrigerator. “Hi, Dad.” Knowing I was stalling, I grabbed two glasses from the cabinet and poured water for Blaine and myself.  
  
Carole entered the room then, folding her coat over her arm. “What’s going on?”  
  
“Dad, Carole, this is my friend Blaine,” I said, feeling stupid, because that wasn’t even scratching the surface.  
  
Carole smiled kindly at Blaine as he stepped forward and shook her hand. Dad raised his eyebrows, recognition dawning, and Blaine shook his hand as well.  
  
“You’re the boy who works at the record store.”  
  
Blaine nodded. “Blaine Anderson, sir. It’s nice to meet you, though, uh, I wish I had a better reason to do so.”  
  
Carole frowned. “What do you mean?”  
  
The three of them looked at me as I rounded the counter and set one of the glasses in front of Blaine. He thanked me softly, and I sighed. Dad set the food down on the counter.  
  
“Kurt has something he needs to tell you,” Blaine said, eyeing me at the end like a nudge.  
  
“I’m... being harassed at school,” I started. “And I’m scared all the time, because the teachers won’t do anything about it.”  
  
“Being harassed how?”  
  
“Physically. Shoving. And making comments. It’s mostly just one person, but it’s been getting worse recently, and I can’t concentrate on anything.”  
  
Carole paled. “Are you getting hurt?”  
  
I hesitated, and Blaine turned to me. “Show them, Kurt.”  
  
Glaring at him, I reached for the neck hole of my undershirt and dragged it over my head. Carole and my dad crowded around, gasping and touching my back.  
  
“What the hell did he do, did he hit you with something?”  
  
“No,” I sighed. “I was shoved in the hallway and hit a padlock from one of the lockers.”  
  
Carole brought air in through her teeth. “You should put some witch hazel on that, hon.”  
  
“Already did it,” Blaine said quietly.  
  
“How did _you_ find out about this?” my dad asked Blaine, and I could tell it was accusatory, that he was thinking Blaine had gotten me naked.  
  
“I knew he was having a hard time, but Kurt came by the store today, really upset, and told me that this kid had threatened to kill him.” Blaine swallowed, shifting to his other foot. “I tried to give him a hug, but there were bruises in the way, and...”  
  
“And then he insisted that we come over and tell you about it,” I finished, not exactly wanting to spell out how he’d forced me to strip. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner, I just—I didn’t want to worry you.”  
  
“What’s this kid’s name, Kurt?”  
  
“David Karofsky. He’s on the football team.”  
  
“And he _threatened to kill you?_ ”  
  
I nodded. “If I told anyone.”  
  
Dad was fuming now. “Why hasn’t Finn done anything about this?”  
  
“It’s not his problem, Dad—”  
  
“The hell it’s not!”  
  
Carole brushed her thumb over my forearm. “Have you talked to the teachers?”  
  
“Mr. Schue’s useless for this kind of thing,” I said, shaking my head. “And Coach Sylvester is the principal right now, I have no clue what she would have to say about this.”  
  
“Well, we should set up an appointment with her for tomorrow.”  
  
I nodded, and looked at Blaine, who was leaning against the counter, staring into his glass of water. When he glanced up, I sent him a half-smile before pulling my shirt back on.  
  
“I didn’t see another car in the driveway,” Dad said as I fixed my hair.  
  
“Yeah, I drove Kurt’s over here,” Blaine told him. “He was pretty shaken up.”  
  
“Yours still at the store?”  
  
He nodded.  
  
Dad sighed. “Well, have some food with us and I’ll drive you back.”  
  
“Thank you, sir.”  
  
I looked warily at my dad, about to cut in and say I’d drive Blaine, and he matched it with a _don’t fight me on this one_.  
  
Carole untied the plastic bag that the food was in, asking Blaine if he liked General Tso’s chicken. He smiled warmly at her, said it was his favorite, and helped me set the table.  
  
  
  
“That’s not all right at all. I won’t allow it,” Principal Sue said, frowning. “I can’t have one student threatening the life of another.” She sighed, flipping through the Polaroids that Carole had thought to take of my bruises before we went to see the principal. “Can you prove that Karofsky’s the one who left these?”  
  
I bit my lip. “Would a witness work?”  
  
“It would help a lot if you could get someone to come forward.”  
  
I nodded. “Okay.”  
  
“Of course, we will also ask him directly,” she continued. “I’m sure his defense will be riveting.”  
  
  
  
I was able to corner Finn after glee as he was zipping up his backpack.  
  
“So... I’m complaining to the school board because Karofsky threatened to kill me.”  
  
He nodded, looking up. “Mom told me about that. Are you okay?”  
  
“I’d be great if you would agree to say you’ve seen him being violent towards me. You know he shoves me all the time. The school board won’t do anything unless I have witnesses.”  
  
Finn looked away, frowning, unsure.  
  
“Please, Finn?”  
  
I could see him panicking. “I don’t know, Kurt, I—I’m sorry. The team, it’s complicated—”  
  
“Oh, thanks a lot. You’re about a week away from being my _brother_ , Finn. He threatened my _life_ , and that’s all you have to say?”  
  
Finn sighed, not meeting my eyes, his shoulders slumping.  
  
“Oh, just forget it,” I snapped, seething as I walked away.  
  
  
  
Blaine came over to distract me after classes, letting Stevie out in the backyard while we sat down at the kitchen table with the massive binder I had compiled of wedding plans, fabric swatches and color palettes.  
  
“And this is the dress that Carole decided on,” I told him, sliding a photo across the table. “Don’t you love the way it gathers at the side? She looks _so_ beautiful in it.”  
  
Blaine smiled. “It’s lovely.”  
  
There were boxes everywhere, strewn throughout the house. Most of my summer clothing and the things that I didn’t use every day were enclosed in cardboard, waiting with Sharpie labels to be loaded onto the back of the tow truck from Dad’s shop.  
  
We were moving in with Carole and Finn that weekend, to a bigger house, where Finn and I could each have our own rooms and everyone would have more space to breathe.  
  
“Oh, I should show you the photos of what the cake will look like, too, hang on,” I said, leaving Blaine in the kitchen to grab them from my room.  
  
In the hallway, I paused outside the door to my dad’s room, and pushed it open gently.  
  
None of my mother’s things had been touched yet—I knew that because Dad had been talking regularly the night before after he’d started packing in their room.  
  
This was the house I had grown up in, the one my parents had worked for and bought together. I could feel my way around with my eyes closed, I knew every nook and cranny. I could tell by the footsteps and the creaks in the wood floors exactly where anyone was in the house. Every lasting positive memory of my mother was here. Her blonde hair falling in waves down her back as she washed dishes at the kitchen sink, or reading books to me in the rocking chair that now sits in the corner of the den. The way she’d screamed and laughed one summer in the backyard, when my dad had pointed the garden hose at her, his thumb over the end to make the water shoot.  
  
Moving her things would be an end to those memories. We were moving on. I wasn’t angry with him for finding someone new; it had been nine years, after all, and really, Carole would keep him occupied and help in ways that I couldn’t. It would be good to have a woman around.  
  
A lot of my mother’s clothing had been pilfered by my aunts long ago, but we still had her antique chest of drawers with the vanity mirror above it, the wood stained a rich brown color. Her favorite art was still on the walls, faded Maxfield Parrish prints and old photographs from a day when they only came on paper, in one standard size.  
  
My fingers ghosted over the jewelry box that sat atop the dresser and the heavy brass handles on the drawers. One of them never closed right.  
  
I opened them all reverently, breathing her in. I couldn’t remember it actually happening, but years ago my mother had knocked over a bottle of nice perfume while getting ready to go out one evening, and it had dropped right into her sock drawer. The bottle hadn’t shattered, but the lid had been loose, and golden liquid had spilled out all over.  
  
The scent had been imbedded in the wood, lavender and rosemary.  
  
As I stretched my body out on the rug, I rolled my shoulders and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. I studied the off-white ceiling until my eyes burned and I was forced to close them.  
  
In the days and weeks following my mother’s death, I had witnessed my father lose his shit exactly once. One of the drawers had been left standing open, and he’d shoved it closed so hard he knocked the drawer off its track and cracked the wood pretty badly.  
  
He hated himself for it, and spent hours repairing it and sanding and staining, but my father was a man of metals. You couldn’t solder this back together. It would always carry the scars.  
  
“Kurt?”  
  
_Blaine was probably wondering where I was._ “In here,” I called softly.  
  
Blaine peered into the doorway. “You okay?”  
  
Nodding, I beckoned to him with my hand, and he stepped toward me. As Blaine sank into a crouch beside me, his eyes flickered over the open drawers. “What’s up? Were you looking for something?”  
  
“No,” I murmured. “Can you smell that?”  
  
Blaine hummed. “It smells good.”  
  
“It was my mother’s perfume.”  
  
“Before... oh.” Blaine settled onto his back, our shoulders brushing. “Do you come in here and talk to her?”  
  
“Sometimes. But mostly I just smell her, and I’m scared that after we move I won’t get the same feeling from it. I don’t know... it just kind of hit me, now that we’re boxing up everything.”  
  
Blaine nodded, rolling onto his side and propping on an elbow to face me. “Like you’re leaving her behind?”  
  
“Yeah. I’ll probably end up packing her things so Dad doesn’t have to do it.”  
  
“You know, she’ll always be with you, no matter where you are,” he said, cocking his head to the side.  
  
I smirked back, patting over my heart with one hand. “Yeah, in here, I know,” I said. “She would’ve liked you, I think.”  
  
“Oh, really?” Blaine said, the side of his mouth twisting up. “What would she have liked about me?”  
  
I chuckled softly, itching my chest as I looked up at him through the twelve-or-so inches of space between our faces. “She’d have found you to be very debonair, I suppose, but with too much product in your hair.”  
  
“What? How do you know she’d think that?”  
  
I scoffed. “She married my _father_. I think that says a lot.”  
  
“What, am I too stuck up now, compared to the mechanic? Huh?” he said, sniggering, poking my ribs. “What’re you tryin’ to say there, Kurt?”  
  
“Personal grooming is _not_ a bad thing, Blaine,” I said, smacking his hand away and grinning. “But I do think you could do with a little less of a helmet.”  
  
Blaine rolled his eyes, dropping onto his back, and sighed. “When I got the manager position I decided I should probably at least _try_ to look professional. My dad always said I looked like less of a degenerate this way.”  
  
“You could stifle the natural curl a little less, though. Mr. Schue uses enough product for this entire town, and he doesn’t even comb his hair _straight_.”  
  
Laughing softly, Blaine shook his head. “Perhaps something can be arranged.”  
  
  
  
My answer to the witness question came the next day, as everyone filed out of my American History classroom for lunch, when I turned to find Sam behind me.  
  
“Do you still need a witness against Karofsky?” he asked, and shifted on his feet, gripping the straps of his backpack.  
  
Hope swirled in my chest. “Yes, I do, actually.”  
  
“I just wanted to tell you, that guy’s an asshole. I’ll do it.”  
  
My jaw dropped, but I closed it in time to smile. “Wow, really? Thank you.”  
  
“Yeah. I just... I guess since I haven’t been here that long I don’t have the same loyalties as other people.”  
  
“You heard me talking to Finn, didn’t you,” I said with a sigh.  
  
Sam sent me a half-smile, squeezing my shoulder. “Safety first. What do I have to do?”


	3. Act I: Grief And Care, Part III

_A/N: I know it's in the warnings, but I just want to say ahead of time that Christianity is put in a negative light in this fic because of Blaine's family, and that will start in this chapter. It's based on some experiences with people in my family and my worst fears about them, though I've tried to handle it in a respectful way. I hope that it's not an issue for anybody. Thanks._

 

I burst into Blaine’s back office with a huge grin, and sagged slightly when I found him on the phone. He waved and gestured toward the chair on the other side of his desk, and I sat down, bouncing twice before crossing my legs.

“I know... yes, I took care of that this week.” Blaine snorted into the phone. “They wanted eighteen for it. I know right, that’s what I said. Ridiculous. Didn’t know what the fuck they had. Okay, man, I gotta go, thanks for the help. Have a good one.” He hung up, set the phone down on his desk, and crossed his arms, raising his eyebrows as he looked at me. “Shop talk. Hi.”

I took up my previous grin. “Hi.”

“So. Tell me what happened that was so good today.”

“Well,” I sighed, “Karofsky’s been successfully expelled, so now I get to focus all of my stress on my dad’s wedding this weekend.”

Blaine smiled broadly back at me. “That’s _awesome_ , Kurt. Knew you could do it.”

“I feel like there’ll likely be backlash from the student body, but...”

“Hey, none of that,” Blaine said, standing up and striding around his desk to my side, taking my hands in his. “This calls for a celebration. You get banana bread with your coffee today, sir. C’mon.”

 

 

“Who’s this extra chair for?” I asked Finn as we looked over the reception room one last time before heading to the church.

Two red-clothed tables were set aside for the glee club, but between the place cards for Tina and Sam sat a seventh chair, at a table meant for six.

“I dunno,” he said with a smile. “Don’t move it, though.”

I didn’t get my answer until after the ceremony and a few minutes before Finn’s toast. Blaine was in a beautiful three-piece suit, picking up a flute of orange juice from the buffet table. He smiled when he saw me, and took a sip.

“Hey,” I said as I approached him. “What are you doing here?”

“Your dad invited me. He asked if I had a suit first, though.”  
  
I hugged him, mindful of his glass, before stepping back to look him up and down. “You look great.”

“Thank you. And of course, you clean up wonderfully yourself, Best Man.”

“Well, I do try.”

“Don’t be modest,” Blaine said, grinning. “I heard you guys perform. Bruno Mars, good choice.”

“You were _there?_ ”

He ducked his head. “I hid in the back with the elderly.”

“ _Blaine..._ ” I whined, looking away. “Well, thank you for that. I would’ve freaked if I had known you were there.”

“That’s what your dad said, so. You guys sounded great.”

I smiled back at him easily, before gesturing to his juice. “I don’t think my dad or anyone would mind if you had some champagne.”

“I’m not a big drinker,” he said. “That’s... not a story for a wedding.”

Puck came up behind me then, smacking my ass on the way to the buffet table, and I immediately stiffened, whipping around. “Dammit, Puckerman,” I hissed as he passed us, whistling. Blaine moved closer to me, and I looked up to see him watching Noah carefully.

I reached out to touch Blaine’s arm, and his attention was focused on me at once, his hand sliding around the small of my back. “From him, I think that’s supposed to be encouragement,” I told him. “It’s okay.”

Blaine sighed. “Sorry. I just... _worry_ about you all the time.”

I felt like saying _please don’t_ , but my heart swelled also, because I wanted him to. Whether I _needed him to_ , though—that was a question I was afraid to answer.

Settling for straightening his lapels, I smiled softly at Blaine and picked some lint from his shoulders.

 

 

Dad and Carole left on their honeymoon the day after we finished moving into the new house.

Well, _finished_ is a weird way to put it, since about half the boxes hadn’t been touched yet, just maneuvered into vaguely appropriate rooms. But it was enough for Finn and me to manage with while they were gone.

They left us a hundred dollars in cash for food and emergencies. I bought them an O’ahu travel guide and left it on Dad’s luggage.

Finn’s apology at the wedding had been a very nice surprise, and it felt good to know he had my back again, though it made me angry he was only able to feel that way after Karofsky was out of the picture. We made a deal that on the night our parents left that he wouldn’t say anything about me hanging out with Blaine as long as he could have Rachel over whenever he wanted, and I intended on taking full advantage of that.

Looking up porn on my laptop, however, wasn’t something I thought about very much ahead of time. It just... kind of _happened_.

 

 

“You’re quiet tonight,” Blaine said softly as we drove back from dinner at Breadstix with Mercedes, passing yellow streetlights in the rain. “Is everything okay?”

Shaking my head, I smirked, my elbow propped up on the passenger door. “Sorry, I don’t know. I just, uh—never mind.”

“No, tell me, what is it?”

“It’s nothing.”

“ _Kurt_.”

I sighed. “I, uh, I looked up some gay porn last night.”

Blaine raised his eyebrows, and then he smiled. “Oh yeah? What’d you think?”

I looked down at my shoes. “It was terrifying. And the lighting was awful.”

He snorted. “It’s usually both of those. That’s not what sex is actually like, though, Kurt. Porn glosses over a lot of things.”

“I know it’s exaggerated and that they’re paid and everything, but...” I shook my head again, wringing my hands. “Ugh. It’s burned in my retinas.”

“Did it have an attempted plotline, or was it just sex?”

“Something about playing doctor, what’s the diagnosis...”

He reached a hand over and patted my knee then, fighting to hold in a laugh. “That’s not so bad. My first was on accident, bondage porn. Scared the shit out of me, though I guess most of that is that I didn’t know what it was,” Blaine said as the car slowed for a red light. “I’ve got some good stuff at home,” he said casually, rubbing my thigh before taking his hand back to turn a corner. I watched Blaine’s profile carefully after he said that, and he looked back at me, catching my eye and shrugging his shoulders. “Just, if you wanted to come over and watch some, and I could point out and make fun of all the things they’re doing that are unrealistic...”

“I think I might pass on that, but thank you,” I told him, blushing scarlet.

 

 

Despite how cavalier Blaine had been about porno a few days before, he kept his DVDs in a box tucked away in his bedroom closet. He set the box down on the coffee table in front of me and removed the lid. We each lifted out a few, shuffling through them as he sat down next to me on the couch.

“A lot of these I bought used from the Columbus branch of the store, during college,” he said, tilting a copy of _Dick Jones: Wild West Encounters_ in my direction. “People brought in the weirdest stuff. Lima porn, from what I’ve seen, though... well, it’s ninety-five percent for straight guys, I’ll put it that way.”

“The Rocki Whore Picture Show: A Hardcore Parody?”

Blaine laughed, looking over my shoulder at the cover. “God. That was a gag gift for my twenty-first birthday.”

“Does it have music?”

“I actually still haven’t watched it. Shall I put it in?”

I snorted, spying a grinning, fully-clothed Riff Raff on the cover. “Sure.”

It was atrocious, and it wasn’t even _gay_. Blaine was cringing even worse than I was, which made me feel better about it. At least the production quality was quite a bit better than the last I had watched.

“This is just so out-of-character,” Blaine laughed. “Janet does _not_ give road head.”

I thought of Rachel then, and my head cocked to the side as I felt the blood drain from it. “Did I tell you that the glee club put on this musical back in October? It was actually a few days before I met you.”

He tore his eyes from the screen and smiled. “Really?”

“Yeah, it was awesome, I got to be Riff Raff. But my stepbrother Finn played Brad, so this is kind of...”

“Hah. Disturbing?”

“Just a little bit.”

Blaine snorted. “Did you have the wig and everything?”

“Oh, yeah, it was perfect. I was thrilled.”

We looked back at the screen. They were having sex now, Janet was making disgusting airhead _oooh Brads_ and straddling him backwards with her thong pushed aside—overall, a very weak Sarandon impression.

“That’s called a reverse cowboy,” Blaine said, pointing at the screen. “Or, I guess, cowgirl.”

“Can we fast-forward?” I asked. “This is just...”

“Yeah, it’s not doing anything for me either.”

We fast-forwarded again through Magenta— _Vagina_ for this version—going down on Columbia, and watched another scene with Eddie and Columbia in her bedroom.

“Does she have to make that much _noise?_ ” I asked. This couldn’t possibly feel as good as she was trying to verbally express, and she was just irritating.

“That’s why I usually watch porn on mute,” Blaine sniggered back. “Good _god_ ,” he said, as Eddie put his dick up her butt. “Okay, _don’t_ use saliva for lube, Kurt.”

“What?”

“She’s spitting on her own ass to make the slide in easier. It doesn’t work that way.”

I squirmed in my seat, fitting my hands between my knees. “How does it work?”

Blaine paused the DVD, dropping the remote back onto the coffee table, and looked down at it for a few moments, as if wondering where to start. “You can’t just push into someone anally,” he said, gesturing into the room with his hands. “It’s tight, and it’s dry. And completely aside from always using a condom, which they’re clearly _not_ doing, it can be really painful if it’s not done right.”

“...has that happened to you?” I asked softly.

Blaine looked up, and then he frowned. “My first time wasn’t great. We didn’t know what we were doing.” I nodded, and Blaine continued. “Anyway, you have to stretch out the ass before you can barge in there. You can use fingers for that, or toys, with lube. Lots of it.”

 _Lube_. The first thing I thought of was the grease fittings on a car, regular maintenance every 10,000 miles that we do on vehicles all the time at the shop, and shook my head, making a face. “Isn’t that kind of... unsanitary?”

“Yeah, well... it’s what we’ve got to work with,” he said, chuckling. “That’s also why it’s a good idea to shower before. But, I mean... it’s not like all the pleasure is for the top, like all you can do is reduce the pain. Getting fucked feels _amazing_.”

I raised my eyebrows at his enthusiasm. “Is that your preference?”

Blaine blushed, smiling. “Yeah.”

We watched a few more minutes of it and turned it off, after they had turned Frankenfurter _straight_ , and Rocky came out of mummification as a _woman_.

“ _Why would a heterosexual male watch a porn parody of Rocky Horror, anyway?_ ” I asked Blaine as he put the DVD back in its case. “And who the hell bought this for _you?_ ”

He burst out laughing and reached over to kiss me on the cheek—and he did it like it was nothing.

I spent the drive home mulling over the new development of Blaine’s sexual preferences— _would he let me do that to him if we ever got together?_ And I felt in some way relieved that he wouldn’t expect me to offer up my ass just because I wear nice clothes and act like a prissy bitch a lot of the time.

 

 

**December**

For the couple of weeks between the honeymoon and the start of Christmas break, I didn’t get to see Blaine much—I was doing carols with the glee club as well as studying for finals, and without Karofsky to deal with, school was much easier to focus on. I had catching up to do. We texted a lot though, throughout the days, and when Blaine called to ask how he should decorate Trax for the holidays, I came over with red ribbon of various widths and helped him make wreaths out of warped records he couldn’t sell and provided my input on which classic Christmas albums should be on display.

Blaine came to see us perform at Sectionals, and when we won, he was the first on his feet cheering. When I found him in the lobby afterward, he swung me around in a hug and let me drag him over to meet everyone again and fawn over the trophy. Puck’s eyes landed on us as we joined the group—I could feel his attention focused on the hand curled around my waist. He raised his eyebrows at me, and I nodded, leaning into Blaine.

Blaine walked out to the parking lot with us, and I laughed quietly to myself as he made small talk with Mercedes. A few times his fingers reached out as if to check in with me, and I smiled back at him each time, loving his touch.

“He came to the wedding,” Puck commented later, as Blaine walked away toward his car and we prepared to get back on the bus to McKinley. “Are you guys, like, together?”

“No. He’s... a friend.”

Puck smirked back. “He good to you?”

Blaine turned around then as he reached his car, sending one last wave before unlocking the doors and sliding inside.

I waved back, and tucked my hands into my pants pockets. No one had ever made me feel so comfortable with who I was before. “Blaine... makes me feel good about _myself_.”

Puck smiled then. “Cool. I didn’t want to have to give him a beatdown.”

“...Thanks, I think,” I said, looking at him strangely.

Quirking his eyebrows back at me, Puck chuckled. “If he was a little taller, you’d make a really cute couple.”

“Why does he need to be taller?”

“Because he’s, like, _butch_ compared to you. I don’t know, I guess it’s just unexpected.”

“Well, I’m sure he makes up for it in other areas, Puckerman.” And with that I turned away from him, and boarded the bus.

 

 

After my last final, I stopped into Trax to get coffee with Blaine. Everything had iced over during the night, and the whole school had been hoping we might get extra days to study if classes were cancelled. Blaine and I were wrapped up in scarves and the trek to The Lima Bean looked treacherous.

“This is about to be a serious blow to my grace, I can tell already,” I said mostly to myself as we crossed the parking lot carefully, the cold wind biting at our faces.

Blaine chuckled and hunkered further into his coat. “Last winter at a bus stop I accidentally did a full James Brown split.”

“What?”

“Like, my legs went in opposite directions on the ice. Went straight down, hit my knee pretty hard. It was bad.” He pointed out a patch of ice, and we stepped around it and onto the sidewalk.

“I’d like to have seen that,” I told him, smiling.

“Stop, you’ll jinx it,” he stage-whispered, and hopped over some more ice, extending his hand to me. I took it with a smile, gripping his hand through both of our gloves, and maneuvered across.

“I _do_ have longer legs than you, y’know,” I said teasingly, knocking his shoulder with mine, and Blaine sniggered, letting go of my hand and using his other to squeeze my side, poking at my kidney.

We made it to the intersection without too much trouble, crossed when the light told us to, and stepped over the filthy slush hugging the curb. The Lima Bean was a warm, welcome reprieve, and Blaine’s hand settled on the small of my back as he opened the door.

“Is David single?” I asked, taking off my gloves as we stood in line.

Blaine looked up from his wallet and raised his eyebrows in surprise. “He likes _women_.”

I snorted at him. “Of course he does. I was thinking about setting him up with Mercedes.”

“Oh,” Blaine said with a sigh, before smiling. “Uh, yeah, I think he is.”

“I just... I haven’t spent very much time with her in the past couple of months. She feels left out.”

“I guess that’s my fault,” he said as we shuffled forward in line.

“It is,” I said, smiling as I rubbed his arm.

 

 

“Aw, shit,” Blaine said from his bedroom.

“What?” I asked from the living room couch, where I sat playing with Stevie and waiting for Blaine to finish getting ready.

“My button came off,” he said with a great sigh. “I’ll have to take it home with me, ask my mom to do it.”

“Nonsense, let’s see it.”

Blaine came out in an unbuttoned plaid shirt, and tugged at the section where there was one missing. Opening his other hand, he showed me the button, with threads still hanging from it.

“Oh, that’s easy, I can do that,” I said, taking the button from him and placing it on the coffee table, before digging into my bag for my emergency sewing kit.

“You carry one of those around with you?” he asked, laughing, and I sent him a look before snapping my fingers.

“Shirt, please.”

Blaine complied, and as I took the shirt from him, I pretended not to ogle his chest and the dark hair that spread down to his waistband. Blaine returned to his room, and when he came back in a t-shirt, I had already matched the navy thread, cut off a section and fitted it through the eye of the needle.

Scooting to the edge of the seat, I laid Blaine’s shirt over my knee and double-knotted the loop I had made with the thread. When Stevie came to investigate, I shooed her away. Sitting down beside me, Blaine called the dog, effectively distracting her as I set to work.

“What are you doing for Christmas?” I asked, realizing I had never heard him mention his mother before.

He sighed. “My mom wants me to drive down to Columbus for a few days.”

“You don’t sound very excited,” I said, raising my eyebrows as I pulled the needle past one of the button’s sew-throughs and dragged the thread behind it.

“Christmas has been kind of terrible ever since my parents got divorced,” he said. “My dad never accepted me so there’s always a fucking scene now if I’m the least bit...” Blaine trailed off.

“Unashamed?” I finished for him, yanking the thread taut.

Blaine nodded in the corner of my eye. “My mom and brothers are cool about it, they’ve met boyfriends before and stuff, but it just... it just makes me feel like shit, you know? And Christmas isn’t supposed to do that.”

My hands stilled, and I looked up at Blaine. “Why does he even come for Christmas?”

“My brothers mostly, I guess.”

I sighed, focusing on my work again. “What do they think of him?”

“Honestly, I think they stay on civil terms with him because he still sends them a check every few months. At least he’s given up on me ever going to church. They don’t go either, but I guess... they’re not _nonconforming_ about it. They’re straight kids who make Daddy proud. Cooper is married and has a little girl now and Simon’s still in school.”

I chuckled weakly and pushed the needle back through the button.

“I haven’t had a conversation with him that didn’t end with me seething or feeling like shit in... three years?”

Cringing, I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”

“I just, fuck—I don’t get—I have a perfectly good moral code! Can’t I be a good person for my own conscience instead of my own salvation? Isn’t that a more selfless reason anyway?”

“You’re preaching to the choir on that one.”

Blaine laughed softly and sighed. “I just... I don’t like when people try to say their way is _the only way_ , y’know? And then refuse to believe in science? It frustrates the living shit out of me.”

“No, absolutely. You’re talking to an atheist, so.”

Blaine hung his head, smirking. “So much for social control, huh?”

“Right.” Sending him back a wry smile, I tied a final knot in the thread and reached for the tiny scissors that came in the kit, snipping the excess and setting the needle aside before standing and shaking out Blaine’s shirt.

“There you go, dear,” I said, and when Blaine stood as well, I held the fabric up to him. “Good as new.”

Thanking me, he took the shirt and shrugged it around his shoulders, sliding his arms through the sleeves. My fingers lifted with Blaine’s to help button it up, but he stopped my hands with his own. “I’ve got it.”

Masking disappointment, masking _why can I only touch you sometimes, only when you’re controlling it_ , I smirked, sitting back down to put the needle and thread away. “Keep telling yourself that, Blaine.”

“Hey,” he said after a moment, touching my shoulder. “You’re really lucky, Kurt. Your dad actually _wants_ to understand. He’s a really good man.”

“I know he is,” I said softly. “I... I don’t appreciate him enough.”

 

 

A few days before he was set to leave, Blaine texted me with _**I got you something for Christmas**_.

Smiling brightly down at my phone, I replied, _**Me too. Let’s have an early Xmas together this week**_ —which is why he showed up on my doorstep on the 23rd, holding a wrapped box and wearing a hideous Santa sweater.

“Really, I only wore this because I knew you would insult it,” Blaine said as I laughed at him. “We used to have ugly sweater parties at the Columbus store every year as an excuse to drink too much eggnog and still be non-denominational, and this was mine.”

Blaine took off his shoes at the door and we padded in thick socks to the living room to sit in front of the tree. I pulled Blaine’s package out from under the branches, and we traded.

“You go first,” Blaine said with a grin, gesturing to the box I held in my lap. I thought about insisting the opposite, but he looked so excited that curiosity got the better of me. Lifting the tape carefully, I tried to unwrap it without tearing the paper, but Blaine scoffed. “Oh, come _on_ ,” he said, making grabby hands, and I sighed, ripping the wrapping off and opening the box with a smile.

There was an envelope inside, nestled amongst tissue paper—that was all that the box held. “Nice buildup, Blaine.”

He sniggered. “Read it.”

I opened the envelope and pulled out its contents: _This card entitles the bearer to six hours of recording time at Ladybird Studios in Columbus, Ohio._ “Wow, Blaine, I—this...”

He smiled, shrugging his shoulders. “I thought you might want to record some of the songs you sing. I know the guy who owns the place, he owes me a favor, so when you find time and you want to go over there, just tell me and I can set it up.”

“This is amazing, Blaine, thank you. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get over there, though, I mean, it’s a couple hours’ drive...”

He nodded. “I know, but there aren’t really any studios in Lima, I’ve asked around—and honestly I couldn’t figure out what else to get you besides something from Trax, but that just seemed... lazy?”

Smirking at him, I nodded, touching his knee with my fingertips. “Open yours.”

I watched his face as he untied the ribbon, the big flop of curls over his forehead making him look even more like a little kid as he tore through my favorite poinsettia wrapping paper with abandon.

His box was smaller than the one my envelope had come in, but the gift itself did warrant a box—pocketwatches were on the way back, and when I saw this one, it had reminded me of Blaine’s hipster-gentleman look. As he popped open the hinged case it had come in, I watched his expression change from excitement to something like pensive wonder.

“Is... is this an antique?” Blaine asked, taking it carefully from the case, running his thumb over the brushed bronze finish and weighing the chain in his other hand.

I felt myself blush a little bit. “Yeah. It called to me.”

He grinned, opening the cover from over the watch’s face and peering down at the Roman numerals before meeting my eyes again. “It’s beautiful, Kurt, thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, beaming. “I’m so happy that you like it.”

“I love it,” he said, getting up on his knees and leaning forward to hug me. Blaine sighed into my shoulder when I wrapped my arms around him. “Thank you,” he said again softly, and squeezed the back of my neck as he pulled away.

 

 

 ** _Ugh i wanna fastforwrd past alll of this and pretend it never happneed_** , he texted on Christmas Eve.

There were too many people in the kitchen anyway, including Finn’s aunt, uncle and cousins, and my pecan pie was already in the oven with the timer on, so I used it as an excuse to escape upstairs and call Blaine.

“Hey you,” he answered, his voice hushed and a little slurred, and I heard a door close on his end. “Merry Christmas.”

“How are you?”

Blaine chuckled darkly and groaned. “Almost punched my dad in the face.”

My heart sank. “What happened?”

“I brought Stevie with me, y’know, ‘cause I’m here for the week, and the bastard made some fuckin’ remark about bestiality. I don’t think he actually meant it, you know, but the _look on his face_ , just broke the fuckin’ camel’s back.”

I sighed, closing my eyes. “Shit, Blaine. Are you okay?”

He laughed again. “I’m halfway through some Johnny Walker, I dunno. My brothers pulled me off’im until my mom’s boyfriend could throw him out.”

“...Were you drunk when you almost punched him?”

“Not s’much as I am now,” he admitted, and I couldn’t tell if the choke he made then was a sob or not. “I thought it might make me forget how much I wish he loved me.”

“Blaine...”

“Don’t ever let me have more than a beer around you, Kurt. I don’t like drunk me. No good.”

“O-okay.”

“What are you guys doing?”

“Oh, some of Finn and Carole’s family is here, and I just put a pecan pie in the oven.”

“That sounds good,” he said softly. “I should probably let you get back t’them. Sorry for bothering you.”

“No, Blaine, it’s okay. You can tell me anything, honey.” I held my breath when I realized I’d just let that endearment slip, but Blaine sniffed heavily on the line and sighed. “Is... is your dad gone now, then?” I asked carefully.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, he won’t be back.”

“Okay. Go eat something, alright? Put down the alcohol, Blaine.”

He grumbled into the phone before clearing his throat. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“I just... needed to hear your voice.”

I smiled. “Text me when you get home and I’ll come right over, alright?”

 

 

Blaine ended up getting a bad migraine, and his mother wouldn’t let him drive with it.

He didn’t get back into town until New Year’s Eve, but he did text me around nine o’clock to say that he and Stevie had made it through the snow and traffic. I ditched Rachel’s New Year’s party and, as promised, showed up at Blaine’s door half an hour later.

He pulled me into a big hug after closing the door, and sighed a _hey_ into my ear. “Sorry for unloading all my shit on you during a holiday.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked as he released me.

“No,” he said. “I’m sick of talking about it. I just... missed you. Distract me, please.”

“Well, I’ll need you to help me figure out how best to spend the Amazon.com gift card I received.”

“ _Hey now_ ,” he admonished. “Support the indie stores.”

After pouring cups of decaf from his coffeemaker, Blaine and I curled up under a blanket on his couch and watched pieces of holiday movies and specials on the TV until a quarter to midnight or so, when he switched to a local channel to wait for the fireworks.

“Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?” I asked him with a smile.

Blaine smirked. “Not really. Do you?”

I nodded. “To not let anyone tell me what I can’t have.”

“That’s a good one.”

Of course I’d been thinking about getting a New Year’s kiss out of him.

Once they started counting down from thirty seconds on the TV with footage of the ball glittering in Times Square, Blaine turned it up, and I wet my lips, focusing on him. Blaine’s eyes widened as mine flitted down to his mouth and back up, and he looked away, at the TV.

“Blaine.” He hummed back. “Don’t hold out on me here,” I said, elbowing him.

Turning to face me on the couch, Blaine huffed, and met my eyes. When the countdown hit ten seconds, he reached up and brushed my bangs to the side, before cupping my cheek in his hand. I leaned into his touch, resting my hand on his thigh as my pulse hammered under his fingertips.

I couldn’t read the expression on Blaine’s face—he was pressing his lips together, his eyes moving from mine and down to my mouth—and then he was pulling me in.

The first touch was tentative—Blaine’s lips barely brushed against mine, but as I pressed closer and opened for him, Blaine sighed into my mouth, tilting our faces, his thumb moving over my cheek. His other hand lifted to my shoulder, and I smiled against his lips, humming softly. For those few seconds I felt my body temperature rise, felt the weight of him beside me, the swirling in my chest of _this is actually happening_ —the television was on in the background, but I wasn’t hearing it at all.

But then he broke the kiss. “Kurt, wait, I—”

“Please, Blaine,” I said quickly, pressing my nose into his cheek, my eyes still closed, like I could preserve this.

Sighing, Blaine touched my hair again, pulling back. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, as I opened my eyes. “I spent all of Christmas thinking about you, wishing I was here, but I—” He shook his head, as my mind was rapidly piecing together what he’d just said...

“But _what?_ ” I asked softly, rubbing his thigh through his jeans with my thumb.

“I just—I’m not what you need, it’s inappropriate, I’m too—”

“You’re _too_ honorable,” I interrupted. “What I _need_ is for you to kiss me again.”

Blaine’s breath rattled as he exhaled, and I lifted my hand to his chest, but he pulled away, shaking his head again. “No, Kurt,” he said firmly, but not firmly enough, even as he turned from me and sat up straight.

This was the guy who had asked me out on a date, who I talked to every day and night, who was protective and touched me all the time, who _drunk-dialed_ me because he _wanted to hear my voice_ —that wasn’t nothing, that was as far from nothing as I had ever seen. No. _Fuck that_.

“You’re such a coward, Blaine. You’ve wanted me since the day we met,” I snapped. “I don’t understand you—we watched _porn_ the other day. _That_ was inappropriate.”

He stayed silent as I scoffed, confused, searching his face. The blood had drained from it.

“Blaine,” I said as softly as I could manage, and he looked up. “Are you really telling me _no_ right now?”

The way he averted his eyes and hunched in on himself told me everything.

I sighed in frustration, sitting back. “I know it’s because you think you’re too old, but even if I could find another gay guy at my school, he couldn’t even come close to you. He wouldn’t know what to say or how to treat me. You’re not _fifty_. I trust you. Trust _yourself_.”

Blaine started to open his mouth, and then closed it again, eyes cast down to his lap.

I wasn’t going to hold his hand through this and _make_ him feel something for me when clearly he was just being an idiot. I stood from the couch, shoving the blanket at him and grabbing my coat and keys. “I’m going home. Happy New Year, Blaine. Come find me when you grow up and figure out what you want.”

Slamming his door behind me didn’t feel nearly as impressive or satisfying as I had hoped it would.


	4. Act II: Easier To Bear, Part I

ACT II: Easier To Bear

**January**

School started again three days later. I didn’t respond to Blaine’s calls or texts, and I stopped going into Trax after glee club. I didn’t even set foot in The Lima Bean despite the bitter cold.

I felt so torn between being furious about his stubbornness and missing him, and for that week I had to keep reminding myself exactly what my stance was, had to wait for him to make the next move. I’d already told Blaine what I needed him to do.

His voicemail from the next morning was the worst part.

“ _Kurt, it’s me. I feel so shitty about last night, and I really care about you, please just call me so that we can talk about this._ ”

That first one was the only message of his that I replied to—I apologized via text for how it happened, right after getting back from a stressful visit with his family, but that I didn’t regret what I’d said.

His texts after that, once a day or so, were shorter.

_**Kurt, please call me back, I’m sorry.** _

**_I’m such an asshole. I’m so sorry._ **

**_I think I underestimated how much you added to my life._ **

Sooner or later, if he meant any of that, I decided, Blaine would come to the house and say it to my face. Preferably with an addition of _I’m a fucking idiot and I’d love to be your boyfriend_.

 

 

The doorbell rang after dinner on the sixth of January, the first Friday of the year. Finn answered it while I was helping Dad with the dishes.

Over the sink I only heard snippets of my stepbrother’s voice: ‘I don’t know, dude,’ ‘whatever you did,’ and then my name—I guess Finn picks up on my bad moods better than I give him credit for. Drying my hands on a towel, I walked quickly to the front door, my heart in my throat. Finn turned at my approach. And there was Blaine—his hair a mess and a beard coming in, and when his eyes landed on me, they widened desperately, pleadingly.

“Finn, it’s fine,” I said softly. “Go help my dad in the kitchen.”

“You sure?” he asked, eyeing Blaine before looking back at me. I nodded, handing Finn the towel, and he frowned, retreating into the house.

“Hi,” Blaine said, from the middle of the front porch, his fingers itching to his hair as I closed the door behind me and leaned against the jamb. He looked terrible, though with some grooming the beard could be a very good look for him. “I, um, I don’t know if you’ve been getting my texts, but I need to apologize,” he said. “You were right. I... I’ve been a coward.”

Crossing my arms in front of my chest, I looked down at my shoes. “I’m listening.”

“You’ve been right in front of me for weeks, and I’ve been a complete tool. I should have kissed you again on New Year’s Eve, Kurt, I should have kissed you all night, instead of backing out the way I did and making you feel like shit. I should have told you how much you mean to me, and I’m sorry I’m so scared of that, after all that we’ve gotten through together. I’m sorry that I let my father get to me, and...”

Blaine stepped closer, even his running shoes looking a bit pathetic amid the slush.

“Kurt, please look at me,” he said, and I raised my chin sharply, meeting his eyes—and his tone tore my resolve down the way it always did. “I miss you so much,” he said, his voice breaking. “I need you in my life. If you’ll have me, all of me, I’m yours.”

_Mine._

I smiled softly as I watched his eyes fill with tears, and when my arms unfolded and reached toward him, Blaine threw his own around me, pressing his face into my neck and sniffling. I chuckled, tightening my arms around his shoulders. “You could have figured that out a few days ago, it would have saved your haggard thing,” I said into his hair. “Did you go to work this way?”

Blaine straightened, his hands skimming over my ribs as he moved to pull at his sweatshirt. “I do look like shit, don’t I?”

I nodded. “I kinda like the beard though.”

“Would it be alright if I kissed you with it?” he asked. He was biting his lip, looking up at me, and my hands smoothed down to his chest, as if physical contact would help me respond. His fingers came up to grasp my elbows, and I heaved a deep breath, closing my eyes in disbelief.

This _couldn’t_ be real.

“Please, Kurt.”

Finally I laughed again, wiping under his eyes and nodding. I was too tired and missed him too much to make him work for it. “C’mere.”

Blaine’s arms slipped around my waist, and he pulled me in for a firm kiss, opening his mouth, and I melted against him, wrapping my arms around his neck. His beard was prickly against my skin, abrasive, but I just pushed harder into his lips, and he groaned into my mouth before breaking the kiss and smiling at me.

“Do you want to come inside?” I asked softly, sliding my hands across his shoulders and jerking my head towards the door. “It’s cold out here.”

Blaine sighed, exhaustion falling back over his features. “I don’t know, I think maybe I should take a shower, you know, regain some dignity before facing your dad. I want to do this right.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“But... tomorrow? Can I take you out to dinner or something?”

“I suppose so,” I told him, beaming, resisting the urge to bounce on my toes.

“Or, like, maybe a late lunch? I don’t know how I’ll get through the day.”

Laughing softly, I hugged him again, and Blaine pressed his lips to my jaw before returning it.

“Thank you,” he said in my ear. “I’ll call you before I go to bed?” I nodded, and Blaine squeezed my hips with his fingers, smiling before pressing his forehead to mine. “Later.” He picked up my hand as he stepped towards his car, holding on until he was too far away, and I watched him walk backwards from the porch, his eyes on me until he reached into his pocket for his keys.

Blaine waved as he backed his car out of the driveway, and I reached for the doorknob to go back inside. I sank back against the door after closing it behind me, unable to hold in a massive grin.

“What was that all about?” Dad called from the living room.

“Nothing!” I cried back, giddy, and heard him laugh as I scrambled up the stairs.

 

 

“You’re so cheap,” I said with a smile as I inhaled the butter-and-Campbell’s smell of Blaine’s kitchen. My perch on his counter adjacent from the stove offered a great view of him as well. “I can’t believe I let you get away with grilled cheese on our first real date.”

Blaine chuckled, twisting a pepper mill over a pan of tomato soup before stirring it gently and resting the spoon on a saucer. He turned to check on the sandwiches then, peering under the bread with a spatula and reducing the heat, and finally faced me. His fingertips tucked under my knees, squeezing gently, and he smiled up at me. “You’ll find I’m actually a semi-decent cook,” he said. “I can make pasta too.”

Leaning forward, I rested my hands on Blaine’s neck, adjusting the collar of his shirt and humming. “Good.”

Blaine had to tilt his face up to kiss me, and when he did, I was hooking an arm around his neck, and parting my knees so that he could step between them, his palms sliding up my thighs as met Blaine’s tongue with mine. The kiss was unhurried, but strong—I could feel it coursing through me, pushing and pulling, connecting to his hands that were warm against my hips. Blaine’s eyes were closed as I pressed my forehead to his, a small smile on his face.

“I really wanted you to be my first kiss, Blaine,” I told him softly, and Blaine opened his eyes, leaning into my hand as I ran my fingers over his faint stubble. “Not... not _him_.”

Blaine sighed and squeezed my thighs in his hands. “I did too. And I’m sorry I screwed up your second.” He tugged me gently forward, flush against him, and one side of his mouth quirked up as his hands rubbed up and down my thighs. “First kisses are overrated, though, Kurt. Mine was during truth or dare, _with a girl_. The only power or meaning it has is what you give to it.” He pecked my lips then, and smiled, his eyes wide, sparkling, a strange innocence about them.

“Thank you.”

Blaine nodded and pressed a soft kiss below my jaw before stepping away from me to flip the sandwiches. “These are gonna be _good_ ,” he said, inhaling deeply, and reached into a cabinet for plates and mugs for our food.

I was tingling as I jumped down from the counter. Getting his hands on me again would be my next objective after lunch.

 

 

Wes and David started a slow clap the next time I came into the store.

“Thank you, _finally_ ,” David said with a sigh, as Blaine smiled at me and slid his arms around my waist from behind. “It’s been hell watching him _moon_ over you.”

I turned my head to coo at Blaine, threading my fingers with his.

Wes smiled in agreement. “Not to mention last week when he dragged his feet everywhere. All he would play over the system was mid-to-late-nineties Radiohead. I wanted to—”

“Now, now, that’s quite enough of that. Get back to work.” Blaine kissed below my ear, and David rolled his eyes, shaking his head as he turned away.

“Hi,” I said softly, turning in Blaine’s arms.

“Hey. How was school?”

“Oh, it was fine,” I said airily, and Blaine chuckled.

“Good. I, uh, I have a business proposition for you.”

I raised my eyebrows, cocking my head at him with a grin. “Oh? What’s that?”

“Do you think I could get my oil changed this week?” he asked in my ear.

“I don’t know,” I teased, touching his chest. “It’s gonna cost you. Call down there in a couple hours, I’ll make sure I pick up the phone and give you a time when I can do it for you.”

He smiled. “My own personal grease monkey. Thank you.”

I winked back and gave him the office number.

 

 

Blaine came down to the shop the next afternoon with his little dark green Jetta, and cracked a grin when he saw me in my coveralls with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. I wiped my hands on the rag in my back pocket as I sauntered over to greet him.

Kissing my cheek softly after he got out of his car, Blaine ran his thumb across the classic script of _Kurt_ over my breast pocket, and handed me his keys. “You look adorable.”

“This is about as butch as you’ll probably ever see me,” I told him, smiling and tugging at the rough fabric. “We’ll need to put her up on the rack. Ten minutes?”

Blaine nodded and followed me across the gravel lot to the open garage doors, where Tim was rotating a set of tires.

“This one’s almost done, Blaine, so I’ll get yours up here,” I said as we passed the lift.

Dad was talking to one of our regulars about the selection of snow chains, and I took Blaine into the main office and found the forms he would need to fill out.

“Do you want me to look over the rest of the car, make sure you’re in top shape?”

“What’ll that run me?”

“Forty-six bucks including the oil change. We look over the coolant levels, the filtration system, brake fluid, power steering—”

“Yeah, let’s do that.”

I smiled. “Good. Alright, because you’re a new customer, you need to fill this stuff out,” I said, handing him a clipboard, “And I have your keys, so when you’re done, come find me.”

Blaine sat down in one of the chairs in the waiting area, and I pecked the top of his head before ducking back out the door to the garage.

I was on the creeper under Blaine’s car when he finished.

“How’s it look down there?”

I chuckled. “You want the truth?”

“Oh, _god_. I’m sorry. I haven’t taken care of this thing at all. I ignore my check engine light until it goes away and—”

Rolling out from under the car, I shook my head, laughing. “No, no, don’t worry, it’s not like that.” Sitting up, I stood as gracefully as I could manage, and popped the hood, bending over the engine. “Y’know your coolant’s leaking? That’s what that smell is.”

Reaching across to the brake fluid cap, I tightened it, and caught the way Blaine’s eyes drifted down my body. Licking my lips, I jutted my ass out a little, and his eyes widened as I smirked.

And then my father cleared his throat from behind him.

“Hello, Blaine,” he started, a little dry. “Nice to see you again.”

Blaine turned on his heel. “Uh, you too, sir.”

“What are we doing today?”

Blaine looked to me before answering. “Well, I thought I just needed an oil change, but it sounds like Kurt is finding a lot more things that need work.”

“Uh-huh,” my dad nodded.

“It’s fine, Dad,” I said, closing the hood carefully. “I’m taking care of it.”

“Mmkay,” he nodded, sending Blaine a pointed look.

Blaine raised his eyebrows at me as Dad turned away— _did you tell him?_ —and I shook my head, mouthing _sorry_ and cringing.

“So, you don’t have anywhere to be, do you? This’ll take a couple of hours, unless you want to come back later in the week.”

Blaine shifted from foot to foot. “No, go ahead. I’ll just... wait.”

 

 

I sat down with my dad in the living room that night when _Deadliest Catch_ ended. He switched off the TV as the credits ran, and turned to me.

“What’s up, kiddo?”

“I want you to know that Blaine’s my boyfriend now, Dad.”

Sighing, he nodded and rubbed his fingers over his forehead. “Figured that would happen. When?”

“When he got over himself the other night and decided he could be with me. He’s... Blaine’s got issues with nobility.”

Dad nodded again. “I knew from the way he looked at you in the kitchen.”

“What do you mean?”

“The way he brought you here to talk to Carole and me about that Karofsky kid. He... I could just tell that you’re special to him. I’m not sure how I feel about that yet. But today... You know there’ll be rules since you’re going out now, just like Carole has rules for Finn and Rachel,” he said, and I nodded. “Does Blaine live by himself?”

I sighed. “Yeah. But Dad—”

“Let me finish,” he interrupted gently. “I know that if I crack down too hard, you’re gonna wanna sneak around. And I want us to be able to be honest with each other...”

I raised my eyebrows, and he chuckled.

“Well, as honest as is healthy for me to know.”

“Okay.”

“If you go out, I want you home by eleven, or ten on school nights. And I want to talk to Blaine about this too.” Dad paused then. “He’s also quite a bit older than you, Kurt.”

“I’m aware of that, Dad.”

“Have you guys kissed and stuff?” he asked, and I nodded. “He’s probably done a lot more than you. We haven’t really had the sex talk yet.”

I tensed up immediately. “Please, no.”

“Just, let me say one thing, okay?” I sighed, waiting for him to continue. “Don’t let him tell you what you’re ready for, Kurt. That’s something for you to feel and decide. I can’t... _control_ what happens there, you’re seventeen, but be careful about what you let yourself do. Make sure it means something to you.”

“All we’ve done is kiss, Dad.”

His eyes widened, and he took his baseball cap off. “Jeez. I thought it’d be a while before we’d be having this conversation.”

I sent him a mocking glare that broke into a smile. “What’s that supposed to mean, Dad?”

He scoffed back. “You know damn well what I mean. But you be careful, hear me?”

I nodded. “Of course I will.”

 

 

Blaine smiled down at me, tracing his fingers up my jawline. “I’ve been trying to figure out what to call you,” he said softly.

He was tucked into my side, his elbow next to my ear, his hand propping his head up. The movie we were watching had been over for about twenty minutes, but we were still laid out on the couch in my living room. I hummed, leaning into his hand when it moved up to my cheek. “I’ve got a name,” I told him.

“Yeah, but like... I don’t know, I want to call you _baby_ but it makes me feel like...” Blaine frowned.

“Why? Am I a baby?” I asked.

“No.”

“I would hope not.”

Sighing, he dropped his hand to my chest. “You know what I mean.”

“No, I’m afraid I don’t, Blaine.”

Blaine groaned and pressed his face into my neck. “ _Kuuuurt._ ”

“What?”

I knew exactly what he meant, of course. He was feeling insecure about dating a minor, but I was only going to give him hell about it if he couldn’t be forthcoming.

He kissed under my jaw again, and I could tell this was purely a distraction, a change of subject—but my thoughts of protesting left about as quickly as they came when Blaine took my earlobe between his teeth and sucked on it.

Blaine tucked one of his legs between mine then, and I smiled, sliding my hands over his ribs as he moved to his knees above me. Tilting my chin up, I invited his mouth down and kissed him, my fingers tracing over Blaine’s chest, feeling him, solid above me. He rested more of his weight on me, our chests touching as his tongue entered my mouth, but I froze up slightly when he stretched out his legs and laid his pelvis on my hip. Blaine rocked down against me, once, as my fingers slid into his hair, gripping, and I tugged on the curls, placing my other hand on his chest.

“Blaine. Hey.”

“S-sorry,” he whispered, laughing through his nose.

“You’re too good at distracting me,” I said in his ear. “I hope you’re not thinking something’s going to happen while my dad and Carole are upstairs.” Blaine sighed, tucking his face under my chin, and I chuckled, playing with the hair at the back of his neck. “But I guess we got one thing straight.”

“What’s that?” he grumbled, kissing my collarbone.

“Not a baby.”

Blaine snorted. “Definitely not.” The backs of his fingers trailed up my neck as I rested my jaw against the top of his head. “Sorry if I made you feel like I was pushing you,” he said softly. “I don’t want to _make_ —”

I shushed him, pushing my fingers in circles across his scalp. “I’m not that fragile, Blaine. I’ll stand up to you if I have to.”  
  
“I know that,” he said, looking up as he brushed his thumb over my cheek.

“So you don’t have to treat me like I’ll break. I trust you,” I said, leaning into his hand. “When we’ve got the time and the privacy... I’ll need help with this stuff, with... _sex_ things. It’s not my area. I want it, but... I don’t know.”

“You want it, but what?”

“I’m going to need practical demonstrations,” I told him, turning my face back into his hair. “You’re good at reading people, Blaine, when you pay attention. Take it slow, and I’ll let you know what I’m comfortable with. Just... not here, okay?”

My fingers curled in his, and Blaine smiled slowly, reaching up to kiss me. “Noted.” I could practically see the ideas already swirling in his mind.

 

 

We had been swapping schedules every week—Blaine usually had Thursdays and Saturdays off, but if he had space to adjust that he sometimes would, depending on my plans. During the third week of January I stopped by after glee practice, and our simple, slow kiss at the door led to us stumbling around the coffee table and Blaine pulling me down to straddle him on the couch.

My hands sank into his hair as I leaned in to kiss him, my knees digging into the cushions, and I felt his hands trail over my ribs to splay against my belly, rubbing before settling heavily on my hips. I heaved shallow breaths as his mouth ducked beneath my jaw, sucking on the soft skin there, and I could feel the blood leave my limbs and just _pour_ towards my groin with every piece of him that I could touch. Finding Blaine’s lips again, I chuckled into his mouth, gripping the back of his t-shirt as his hands moved down to my ass. His fingers dug in, squeezing gently, and I rocked back against his hands and pressed a kiss to his ear as he was rolling his hips up to meet mine. It was all-consuming, just on the edge of painful, and I panted into his hair at the contact, a low whine escaping my lips before I snapped them shut.

“What was that?” he asked. “Don’t you dare worry about making noise.”

Blaine cupped my groin with a firm hand then, and the air rushed from my lungs. Pressing my hips into his touch, I fisted the shoulders of his shirt, panting against his neck. I swore softly, finally groaning, mouthing at his skin, and adjusted my knees into a more comfortable position.

His lips turned up into a grin and kissed my cheek before he leaned back. “Switch places with me.”

I did as he said almost mechanically, pivoting to sit beside him on the couch just as he was rising from it, and Blaine bent down toward me, catching my lips with his, before dropping to his knees in front of my legs. I spread them, and he fit snugly in-between, lifting the hem of my shirt to lick and kiss at the skin above my navel. My dick strained toward him, and my fingers itched to reach for him.

Blaine’s hands traveled to the button fly of my jeans, his fingertips tucking inside the waistband as he nuzzled his face against my crotch. “May I?” he asked—pleaded—and looked up at me. “I really, really want to suck you off, Kurt.” One of his hands left my waistband to stroke down my thigh, but he held my gaze, squeezing softly at the knee before moving back up to slide his hand over my ass. “Please, Kurt.”

He was needing _permission_.

I took in a deep breath, willing it not to shake as it came back out, and carded my fingers through his hair. “Okay,” I said, nodding. Blaine grinned, kissing the inside of my wrist, before working my jeans open, and I lifted my hips to help him pull them down my thighs. “What do I need to do, Blaine?” I asked, wincing at how quietly I’d said it.

He smiled, his thumbs massaging into the skin of my inner thighs, and he stretched up to kiss me again. “Don’t worry. You can just sit back for this one.”

Blaine’s hands returned to my waist when my jeans were off—I barely even registered that he’d taken my shoes off—and his eyes left mine as he lifted the elastic of my boxer briefs over my erection. He smiled as it bounced slightly against my stomach, and buried his nose in the close-cropped hair at the base. He hummed there, pressing a kiss before pulling my underwear the rest of the way off and leaning back in.

I watched him with wide eyes, my heart beating in my ears.

“Beautiful,” he whispered into my skin, laving his tongue at the base again, and if I could have blushed any more I would have burst. His fingers wrapped around perfectly, so different from my own hand, and he stroked up once, his thumb pressing into the slit.

“Blaine—” I started, harsher than I’d intended.

He looked up immediately, stilling his actions but not letting go. “You alright?”

I bit my lip, and closed my eyes as he took his hand away. “Please don’t judge me.”

“Of course not, Kurt,” Blaine said gently. “What is it?”

“I won’t last,” I whispered to him after a few seconds. “And I just—I’m _so_ nervous.”

As I covered my face with my hands, Blaine stood, sitting down beside me and pulling at my wrists. “Whoa, Kurt, look at me.” I did so reluctantly, and Blaine smiled halfway. “This is something we can work on together, I promise.”

“How?”

“You’ll have to trust me on this one,” he said, squeezing my hand. “But as for right now, tonight, it means my jaw’ll hurt less.”

I chuckled weakly. “Okay.”

“Is it alright if I keep going?” he asked, rubbing my forearm and preparing to get back on his knees, watching me closely, his gaze so open and loving and _wanting_.

“Yes.” _Of course_ I wanted his mouth on me. “Yes.”

“Are you sure?” he said, smirking.

Nodding, I accepted his soft kiss, and I could feel the eagerness rolling off of him. Blaine settled between my thighs again, and as he stroked me back to full attention and his mouth closed around the head of my dick, I closed my eyes at his warmth and let myself slouch heavily, a hard wail leaving my lips as he used his tongue.

Blaine’s eyes were shut when I opened mine again, his cheeks hollowed, mouth shiny with saliva as it worked up and down. Touching his arm softly above where he held down my hips, I let my hands trail up his shoulders to tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck, and he hummed around me. He opened his eyes then, looking up to meet mine, his long eyelashes fluttering, and I could tell that he was smiling.

He looked gorgeous and obscene—the aesthetic of him would have been _breathtaking_ if I’d been breathing normally to begin with.

Blaine backed off right as I could feel my balls tightening—his tongue dipped into the slit as he let me go, and I whimpered at the loss of contact. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and smiled rather smugly up at me.

“ _Don’t stop there_ ,” I cried, panting. “God, Blaine, what’re you—”

“Tell me what you want, Kurt,” he said, his voice gravelly and rough, his fingers wrapping around me again, looser this time, leisurely. “I want to hear you say it. Take control of it. Own it.”

“But—”

He grabbed my ass with his other hand. “No buts.”

“I want...” I trailed off, blushing.

Blaine quirked an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“I wanna come,” I said in a rush, all air, and he nodded, holding in a grin.

“With what?”

“You, your mouth, your hand, anything,” I told him, almost laughing, my hands on his shoulders. “Please.”

Blaine dropped a kiss onto my thigh before taking most of my dick into his mouth again, and I surprised myself with the moan that escaped my lips, and the way my hips rolled toward him of their own accord. Blaine paused, moving with me, and pushed me back down again. I watched the way his shoulder blades shifted under his shirt as one of his hands curled once more around the base, and my fingers returned to Blaine’s hair as the pressure twisted and coiled in my abdomen.

“Blaine,” I started. “I’m gonna—”

He redoubled his efforts before I could even finish the sentence, and I came moments later with my head thrown back, my arms limp at my sides and my legs trembling around him. I felt Blaine swallow several times as he coaxed me through it, before taking me out from between his lips.

I looked down, my eyes at half-mast, as Blaine dragged his tongue up my dick, cleaning it, and I gasped, twitching away from him, oversensitive. Blaine’s hand stroked up my leg soothingly, and I smiled, combing my fingers through his hair again. When he was done, Blaine sat back on his knees, beaming. He licked his lips, both his hands sliding up my bare thighs, leaving cool, damp patches on my skin.

I thanked him softly, and Blaine rose to his feet, sinking down onto the couch beside me, and pulled me into his arms. I hugged him back tightly, and I could feel his laugh rumbling against my ear before he kissed it.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked, clearing his throat, and I turned to smile against his lips, kissing him, tasting myself on him. Blaine sniggered, his hand rising to cup my cheek, before he sobered and met my eyes. “Thank you for trusting me.”

I nodded lazily, resting my forehead against his temple. “I do.”

Blaine proceeded to encourage masturbation— _It’ll help you become more comfortable with your own body, too, Kurt. Find out what you like and what you don’t._ He kissed my blushing cheeks and I had remembered that he hadn’t gotten off yet.

When I gestured to Blaine’s pants, he stood from the couch and removed them himself, before sitting back down beside me. Blaine had impressive and somewhat intimidating girth, and was what I would later find out to be termed a _grower_ —he would come to remind me of this every time I made a crack about his height.

I tried not to stare, breathing out heavily and meeting his eyes. “Wh- um.”

“Do you want to help?” he asked with a lazy smile.

“ _Yes_ ,” I said, probably far too soon, and Blaine held his hand out for mine.

His skin was so _warm_ , the same color as his flushed lips, and as our fingers wrapped around him and he drew the precum down with his thumb... I felt _alive_ , and I watched him watching me, listened to his breathing.

“It’s not a race,” he said softly in my ear as I pressed myself closer to him on the couch. “Just touch me, and see what happens.”

I squeezed him tighter, pulled his face down for another kiss, and wondered how in the hell I got this lucky.

 

 

The visual of Blaine on his knees and his dick in my hand was sufficient jerk-off material for a good week until I acquired a better one, the second time we fooled around on his bed.

“I like being held down.”

My eyebrows shot up, and I took my hands off him, unsure as I hovered above him on my knees.

He’d said it softly, his eyes half-open, his abs and most of his chest showing where his shirt was rucked up. He had already taken my jeans off at that point, but I had gotten distracted by his stomach while working on his belt buckle.

“Like, physically? I don’t know, Blaine.”

His hand came up to rub the back of my neck. “Which part aren’t you comfortable with?” he asked gently, like he actually cared about my answer, and I frowned down at him.

Other people exercising their physical force on me had not been something I had ever _liked_. It made me feel like I didn’t own my body, like I wasn’t a person. “I wouldn’t want to be taking... _control_ away from you.”

“I’m giving mine to you, Kurt. At least up here,” he said, tapping his fingers against his temple. “It’ll be fun, I promise.” Blaine was smiling. “If I don’t like something, I’ll let you know.” And then he pinched the backs of my knees, before moving up to grab at my thighs, tickling, and then my calves and ribs, until I realized he was just intentionally being annoying.

He was _asking_ for this—for me to do this _for_ him, not to him.

Pushing his wrists to the mattress, I sat on him fully. “You’re so _irritating_ ,” I told him with a smile, bending down to kiss him. Blaine groaned into my mouth as I rocked my hips. “And you’re still wearing pants,” I added, letting his wrists go and clambering off of him to drag Blaine’s jeans down his legs and toss them over the end of the bed.

I grinned, straddling him again, and tugged on the hem of his undershirt. “Off?”

Blaine nodded and sat up slightly to help me strip him, before falling back and resting his hands on my thighs. I ran my fingers over his chest, and watched his face as I ground my hips down against his, the way his mouth fell open and his head tipped back. “You _are_ a quick study, aren’t you,” Blaine panted, and I smiled down at him.

I could feel him through our underwear, hard below my ass—and as I closed my eyes, humming above him, Blaine bucked his hips, and I rose with him, a couple of inches off the mattress. Leaning down, I kissed his mouth again, my hands taking his forearms and pressing them back into the sheets. He sighed as his back cracked audibly, and grinning against my lips, licked the end of my nose. I laughed, kissing his cheek, and pressed our chests together.

When I rocked forward and his breathing staggered, I felt it within me—flexing my fingers in his and bringing sounds out of him with my body translated into a manifestation, an energy that I needed more of. I let my hands trail back to Blaine’s neck and shoulders for leverage, and scooted back over his hips a few inches to line us up better.

That was when he started purring.

Chuckling, I slid my hips sharply against Blaine’s, before his hands grappled for me, turning us onto our sides as his lips smashed to mine. Blaine’s fingers brushed under my shirt and through the hair below my navel until I nodded, murmuring ‘please’ and kissing him again. His hand dove into my underwear, wrapping around me, and as Blaine’s other hand tugged them down my legs, I pressed my hand against his boxers, feeling him, hard and warm beneath the fabric.

I kicked my underwear the rest of the way off, and Blaine helped me with his before taking both of us into his hand. The friction drew the breath out of me, and I writhed next to him, gasping his name, my whole body quaking as I clung to him, thrusting into the column of his fingers, kissing him messily, intermittently. The strokes I offered Blaine smoothed out when his hand began guiding mine, and he smiled, nodding before catching my lips again.

“Let’s dial it down a bit, though,” he whispered, his fingers slowing dramatically. “I want to make this last.”

I wanted to protest, rut against him, but Blaine had other ideas. As his hand crept over my hip and pressed into the small of my back, he kissed at my throat, and I felt his fingers reach higher—under the shirt, _why was I even still wearing it?_ —until our lips met again. He got the article off me soon enough, and I let my hands wander over his chest as our legs tangled together, and I pressed forward, needing his touch.

A very soft whimper-sigh came from Blaine, though, when my fingers passed over one nipple, and I raised an eyebrow at him, doing it again. He grinned crookedly, mouth open, and when I reached both hands up to tweak them with my thumbs, they were pebbled and erect, sensitive— _ready_.

I wondered how he would react if I put my mouth on them.

“I can’t wait to learn every inch of you,” he said with a smile and a kiss, and took me in his hand again. “I wonder...” Blaine raised his eyebrows, his voice lowering along with his gaze. “What happens... if I do _this?_ ”

Blaine’s thumb dipped down to stroke over my balls gently, and I gasped against his lips, the sensations rocketing through my whole body, warming every inch of me. He rolled them in his palm, tugging slightly and rubbing at the skin behind them with his fingertip.

“W-whoa, hey,” I said, my hands finding his hips as I tucked my face into his neck, breathing Blaine in, pulling my knees together.

“Too much?” he asked, moving his hand to curl around my hip, and I nodded, kissing his jaw.

“Good, though,” I assured him, and ran my tongue against his stubble. I wanted to make him come first.

Blaine grumbled happily as he ducked to kiss my neck, and I rolled him onto his back, straddling one of his legs. “God, you have beautiful skin,” he said softly, and I smiled, leaning down to kiss him again as a thank you. My lips found their way down his chest soon enough, and when I finally wrapped them around his left nipple, Blaine whined again, sighing, one of his hands tangling themselves in my hair, the other stroking up the curve of my spine.

I wrapped a hand around Blaine’s dick then—his hips tried to buck off the mattress, and I had to steady myself with my other arm to keep my mouth in place and continue to stroke him. His hands left the back of my head and began reciprocating, stroking me as I switched to his other nipple, taking it between my teeth and _sucking_ until he moaned. Blaine’s breath shook under me, and he pulled me up to kiss him until I was coming onto the hair below his belly button, and he was shushing my apologies with his mouth.

Blaine came in my hand seconds later, and as I collapsed on the sheets beside him, I held my hand up between us, pushing the evidence of his climax between my fingers and smiling at him. I closed my eyes, deep breaths, and felt his hand take my wrist and pull it slowly towards his face; I opened them in time to watch Blaine lick his cum from my knuckles and sink his mouth over the web of my thumb before releasing it, clean. He sighed contentedly, turning his head to look at me, and sniggered a little. I smiled back, closing my eyes again, settling into the pillows.

After a several minutes Blaine pulled me up off the bed and we showered to get the sex off of us, and as I soaped my hands to wash Blaine’s abs, he pressed kisses behind my ears that almost made me lose my footing in the tub.

There was a certain satisfaction to this, a feeling that even though Blaine had been guiding me through it, I had an equal stake, we had done it _together_ , we had shared it—and watching him smile at me, approving and turned on, made everything we had gone through worth it.

 

 

We floated back to his bedroom together after drying off, fingers intertwined, and I sat down on the edge of Blaine’s bed, the sheets cool now against my skin. We looked down at our scattered clothing, and Blaine scratched the back of his neck.

“Do you wanna borrow a t-shirt or something?”

I smiled up at him, touching his thigh. “Yes, please.”

“They’re in the dresser,” he said softly, kissing my forehead and nuzzling against my cheek. “I need to go feed the dog. You want some coffee?”

I hummed in the affirmative, and as he put on his boxers from earlier and left the room, I turned toward his dresser drawers.

The top drawer was full of socks and underwear—standards, white undershirts. There was a t-shirt collection in the third, and I smiled as I went through them, band shirts that had obviously taken him years to acquire, some that looked very well-worn, though I had only seen him in a couple of them.

A flash of periwinkle caught my eye from the bottom of one of the stacks, and I pulled it out, unfolding it. A kneeling girl was on the front, and orange glitter, the great majority of which had been rubbed off.

It was a teenaged Britney Spears—the _Oops... I Did It Again_ tour.

“Oh, _no_ ,” I whispered, laughing to myself, and pulled it on over my head. It was a little tight on me, and I wondered why he still had it—it must have been ten years old.

I went ahead and put on a pair of his underwear as well, black, and looked at myself in his mirror, fixing my damp hair before walking into the kitchen. Blaine was filling Stevie’s water dish at the sink, and she was eating a few feet away. He set the dish on the floor next to her, and when he looked up, Blaine snorted, grinning.

“I know there’s a story behind _this_ ,” I said, twirling.

“That concert was the best day of my life at that point,” he said, motioning me closer with his hand, and hummed appreciatively when I stepped up to him. Blaine’s fingers slid over my ass as he kissed me, and he chuckled against my lips. “ _The crush I had_ was on Justin Timberlake, though.” Blaine paused, quirking his eyebrows. “Are you wearing my briefs too?”

I nodded, and Blaine pecked my lips again.

“That’s so hot.”

“I’m stealing this shirt from you,” I told him very matter-of-factly.

“Good,” he said, smacking my ass and turning to the coffee pot. “It doesn’t fit me anymore.”

 

 

My poker face must be terrible, because as soon as I walked into glee, Santana’s eyes were wide as saucers, and she grinned.

“You fucking got some, didn’t you, Hummel?” And then she looked at my shirt. “The hell’re you wearing?”

I blushed, and she pounced.

Flouncing through the front doors of Trax with Santana Lopez that afternoon was more entertaining than it had the right to be. She was wearing heels, too, which put her a good two inches taller than my boyfriend.

“He’s behind the counter,” I told her softly, and Santana smirked, sauntering over towards Blaine as he looked up to see me trailing behind her. He smiled, and she leaned over the counter toward him.

“Welcome to Trax. Can I help you with anything?” Blaine asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, sultry, licking her lips. “That depends on what you’ve got to offer.”

Wes was frozen on the spot, a few feet away, jaw dropped open.

“Oh my god, Santana, leave the poor man be,” I said, exasperated but smiling, as Blaine rounded the counter. “She insisted,” I said by way of apology, as he kissed my cheek and slipped an arm around my waist. “Blaine, once again, this is Santana.”

“How do you do?” he said rather formally, behind a grin, and shook her hand.

“Just peachy.” She planted her hands on her hips then. “Listen, I’m here to, like, stake out Hummel’s boyfriend, make sure he’s up to snuff, and won’t treat him worse than I do.”

“Oh, really.”

I pressed my forehead against Blaine’s temple, beaming as Santana shrugged and added, “Mostly I just wanted to see if you were hot.”

I smirked. “What’s the report?”

“Please, Hummel, he’s so short I could slap him with my tits.”

Blaine hid his face in my collar as he snorted, and I shook my head, smiling at them both.

“Would you like to get coffee with us?” Blaine asked, slinging an arm around my shoulders as he recovered, ever the gentleman.

“You buying?”

 

 

“You remind me of one of my college friends, Mara,” Blaine said as we sat down. “She got all the chicks.”

Santana almost spit out her coffee, looking around the cafe. “What—I—”

“It’s _all right_ , Santana,” he said, chuckling. “Um, Kurt told me about you and Brittany.”

She narrowed her eyes at him and then at me, before sighing and letting her hands fall to the table. “It’s not like we’re together or anything.”

Blaine smiled. “Why not?”

“She’s got a stupid boyfriend.” Santana shook her head, looking down at her macchiato. “He’s an idiot and he doesn’t know how to treat her.”

“Oh _come on_ , Santana,” I said, chuckling.

She scoffed at me. “Can we _not_ talk about this?”

“Have you talked to _her_ about it?” Blaine asked softly, his hand finding my knee under the table.

Santana sighed. “I’ve tried to, but... not really. Brit... she’d want to be public if we were together, and I just... I can’t do that. To either of us.”

“Because of the kids at school?”

“I guess, yeah. I—” Santana cut herself off with a sigh, and the side of Blaine’s mouth curled up, his eyes warming. “I don’t want to put a label on anything.”

“I bet you could handle a lot more than you realize,” Blaine said.

“Whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You don’t understand.”

“Excuse me?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “I know exactly what kind of people you’re afraid of. I _took_ PE, alright? Don’t let assholes prevent you from having what you want—‘cause if you do, they win.”

I cocked my head at my boyfriend, watching him as I tucked my hand into his. Blaine squeezed it, and smiled softly at me, before picking up his coffee again and taking another sip.

“Just, y’know... don’t regret what you never did.”

Santana scoffed. “Are you _done_ , Doctor Gay?”

Blaine laughed lightly. “Yes.” Slipping his hand into his pocket, Blaine pulled out his pocketwatch to check the time, turning to me with a small smile. “I’m sorry, I need to be getting back. Walk with us?”

The three of us stood from the table, taking our cups with us, and as we stepped out the door and onto the sidewalk, Blaine took my hand in his, bringing it to his lips.

Santana groaned. “You guys are sickening.”

“And I’m sure we’ll hear it again from someone else, except they won’t mean _you’re so cute_.”

“Yeah, well, don’t come cryin’ to me when they string you up. This isn’t your town, Anderson.”

 

 

“You’ve never been able to hide, have you?” Blaine asked gently, his arm around my shoulders as I sat with him on his couch, my legs over his lap.

“No,” I replied, picking at the pills on his sweatshirt. “Did you pass, growing up?”

Blaine sighed. “Sort of. The kids at my school were pretty clean-cut. It was my hobbies that tipped them off.”

“What, your show tunes didn’t gel with their *NSYNC?”

“Hey, I _told you_ about my boyfriend Justin Timberlake.” Laughing through his nose, Blaine pulled me in for a kiss. I smiled softly into his mouth before tucking my shoulder under his arm, and as I pressed my forehead into his neck, I twisted the drawstring to his hood around my fingers.

“Have you had to decide which members of your family you tell the truth to?”

Blaine hummed, his fingers entering my hair, holding me closer to him. “My dad took me to see the first Jurassic Park when it came out,” he said. “I was seven, I loved it, and... I think that was the first time I really understood how different our world views were. I stopped seeing him as someone that’s always right, y’know what I mean?”

I nodded into his neck, feeling his stubble against my hairline. “Did he not like Dr. Malcolm?”

“No, not at all. Said he was an asshole, that he was promoting _evolutionist propaganda_.”

I scoffed.

“Yeah, that was my reaction,” he smirked, rubbing my thigh with his other hand.

“Was your mom very religious?”

He shook his head. “Not really. I mean, she’d gone to church as a kid, but my dad kind of picked it up later in life, and he wanted her to go do it all with him, but she was reluctant. I remember them arguing about it a lot, and eventually she tried to appease him, but he took to it all so fervently and talking about it at the dinner table and... it made him so _negative_. All the time. Everything was so _wrong_ to him.”

I nodded, sighing, and rubbed my hand over his chest.

“And I mean, obviously there are several ways to go about being a Christian, y’know, squeaky wheel gets the grease, but... he didn’t like gays anyway, and—once I got to be about thirteen, _I_ was wrong to him,” he said, his voice turning throaty like it would break. “And my mom—I don’t know how she put up with him for as long as she did. He went to a bible study group a few nights a week because he didn’t like the people at the church nearest our house, and...”

Blaine sighed heavily, sniffling, and I said his name, wrapping my arms tight around him. He hugged me back, pressing his cheek against my hair until he released me to gesture into the room with his hand.

“And now... I mean, he hates that I still work at Trax, he thought the owners enabled me, that I was being lazy, that I’m settling now instead of trying to work my way up _somewhere else_ , staying where I’m comfortable, you know, fuck the fact that I’m the manager now. He thinks I’m letting the education he paid for—like, _maybe one or two quarters of_ —go to waste and...”

Taking both arms from around me to wipe his face, Blaine shook his head again, groaning. My heart was breaking for him, and I dug my fingers into his shirtsleeve, searching for something, _anything_ I could say.

“I mean... at least _that’s_ something I can fucking _do something_ about but...” He trailed off, slumping. “Fuck. I’m so sorry, Kurt. I shouldn’t be—”

“Hey,” I said firmly, pointing my finger at him, startling him into looking up at me. “No. I am _not_ going to let you apologize for being open with me and sharing this, okay?” I watched Blaine bite his lip and sigh before I kissed above his ear and took his face in my hands. “He is missing _so much_ , Blaine. You’re wonderful and it is _his_ loss. None of this is about what you did.”

“But—”

“Stop. I wish he could see in you _half_ of what I do.”

“Yeah, me too,” Blaine sighed, and I pressed my forehead to his for a few seconds before scooting off the couch to make him some warm milk and pulling him up with me—it would make him feel better and calm him down, and I needed something to do with my hands.


	5. Act II: Easier To Bear, Part II

**February**

“He’s in the back,” Wes said, glancing up from his work as I came in, and I nodded to him, letting myself around the counter and through a door. I was greeted with the well-organized maze of a storage room, with doors in a hall leading to restrooms and on the left, the partially open door that read _Manager_.

Knocking softly, I poked my head in. Behind his large wooden desk, Blaine looked up and smiled tiredly, waving me inside. I closed the door behind me and skirted a couple of boxes on the way to his side of the desk, and leaned against the edge of it, watching him look me up and down.

“Sight for sore eyes,” he said almost under his breath, offering me his hand. I took it, and he pulled me down to sit across his knees. “Nothing but paperwork all day,” he sighed, kissing my jaw as I wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

“That’s a very big desk you have.”

Blaine hummed against my skin, grinning, the fingers of one hand sliding between my knees. “All the better to... uh...” He trailed off and snorted.

“What?”

“Oh, I’ve got nothin’,” he said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, right.” I smiled, my fingers playing with the collar of his shirt as I leaned in to kiss his cheek. “Hmm?”

Blaine groaned softly, pulling on my neck and sucking a kiss behind my ear as his other hand slid further up the inside of my thigh.

I shook my head at him, chuckling as I batted his hand away. “You want to go get some coffee?”

Blaine sighed, nodding. “Get me outta here.” His hand drifted down to my ass, ‘helping’ me to stand before straightening some papers on his desk. “I love these jeans on you,” Blaine said as I led the way out of his office, and I did a little shimmy before pulling open the door.

It was my turn to buy, and the barista at The Lima Bean knew our orders to the point that we got _the usual_. We tucked ourselves away on one side of a booth, our joined hands resting on my thigh under the table.

“How was class?” Blaine asked around his cup.

I had embarrassed myself daydreaming—French III had us reciting conjugations and I was called on. I wasn’t listening, I’d been thinking about the hand that was currently resting warm and solid on my leg, and in class my own had drifted down to sit there, wishing he was beside me.

“It was okay,” I said. “Nothing all that interesting. Next week is Valentine’s Day, though, so Mr. Schue will no doubt make us all sit through seven or eight nauseating numbers about _love_.”

“I’m glad you brought that up,” Blaine said softly. “I’m, uh, I’m planning something nice.”

I smiled. “For me?”

“Of course, _for you_. But, uh, Valentine’s Day is on a Monday, and I know how much you like breaking tradition, so I was hoping maybe we could celebrate on Sunday night?”

“Sure.”

“Good. So, keep the evening open.”

 

 

“It’s just days away from Valentine’s Day, ladies and germs, and rumor has it that Kurt Hummel, resident gay at McKinley High, is shacking up with a local business owner and the latest blind item on my column, but stepbrother Finn Hudson has refuted claims. I have decided to go directly to Kurt Hummel himself.

“Mr. Hummel! Is it true that you’re currently doing the dirty with an older man? My sources—”

“Your so-called _sources_ and my life are none of your business,” I told Jacob, sneering as I selected my French book from my locker and tucked it against my chest.

“So you don’t refute the accusations?” he pressed, clutching his digital recorder, his eyebrows higher on his forehead than usual.

“No comment. Go find someone else to harass.”

“I am a journalist, dagnabbit,” Jacob said. “The people want to know!”

I snickered a bit smugly to myself as I walked away.

 

 

“This was... _amazing_ , Blaine, thank you,” I said softly, pressing my forehead to his on my front porch.

“You’re welcome,” Blaine replied and kissed me for what felt like the hundredth time that night, his lips full and smiling. I chuckled against them, righting his jacket with my hands, and Blaine ducked his head to kiss across my jaw. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Kurt.”

I _melted_ for the hundredth time that night as well, and arched my neck to offer him more skin. “Sorry about your neck,” I said in his ear, wrapping my arms around his shoulders.

“Yours isn’t in much better shape,” he whispered, taking the skin under my ear between his teeth again and laving his tongue over it. “I’ll be pressing my fingers into the ones you left all day tomorrow.”

“We look so trashy,” I told him, shaking my head, even though he’d spent the entire night spoiling me, making me feel so cared for, so wanted.

“I prefer to think of it as _claimed_.” Kissing my cheek one last time, Blaine straightened up. “Curfew?” He dug his hand into the pocket of his dress pants, pulling out his pocketwatch to answer his own question. “Yes. Alright,” he sighed, splaying his hands over my ribs inside my jacket. “We’ll talk later.”

I nodded, touching his cheek and smiling at him as I pulled out my keys and unlocked the front door. I watched him walk back to his car, hands in his pockets, before I went inside.

Carole was sitting in the kitchen, the newspaper spread out on the dinner table. “Hey, sweetie. How’d it go?”

I grinned widely at her. “Blaine’s wonderful, Carole. He thought of everything.”

Her eyes drifted to the side of my neck, and I blushed, one hand flying to cover the hickeys. “I can see that,” she said, still smiling. “So what did you guys do?”

I sat down adjacent to her at the table and began. “He took me to this beautiful French restaurant off the highway with all this gorgeous dark wood paneling and he got all the pronunciations wrong but it was _so cute_ and then we went to see some black and white French movie that we didn’t pay attention to most of and fed each other popcorn and... Why are you looking at me that way, Carole?”

She straightened up, smiling. “It’s good, it’s good for you. I’m really glad that you’re happy, sweetie.”

“I am,” I told her.

“You’ve been... having sex with him, haven’t you?”

“What?!” I asked, gasping. “Uh,” I said, searching her expression. “No?”

“Was that a question?” she asked, her eyebrows raised.

“Define sex.”

“You’ve been... you know, taking clothes off,” she said carefully. “ _Fondling below the waist_...”

I bit my lip and nodded slowly. “Yes. Does... does Dad know?”

“He hasn’t said anything to me. But I can just tell,” she said with a small smile.

“What... am I _that_ obvious?” I choked out, laughing a little.

Carole shook her head. “I know we haven’t known each other that long but... I can just tell that things are different—better—for you, now. Not to mention, Blaine’s a _dream_.”

I grinned at her. “I think so too.”

“I’m pretty sure your father and I both think that we’d be hearing about it if he was anything _but_ respectful to you.”

“I used to be... so afraid of that, Carole.”

“Of what your father would say?”

“No, of... sex. But Blaine... he’s let me feel so many things, it’s...”

She nodded. “You’re surprised that you like it so much.”

I looked up at her. “Yeah.”

 

 

Going to school in just a scarf instead of trying to apply cover-up to the hickeys Blaine had succeeded in giving me proved to be a mistake.

It was Azimio this time—he’d been glaring at me ever since Karofsky got expelled, but hadn’t laid a finger on me. I guess the news that I had a sex life now meant verbal harassment could start up again. “Jesus H. Bald-headed Christ, who’re you fucking, faggot?”

 _Someone far hotter than you_ , I thought as I passed him.

“What’d you just say to me?”

 _Shit_. I sighed, turning. “That’s none of your business.”

“I bet you beg him for it, don’t you,” he spat.

“You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?”

“How big was his cock, ladyboy?”

I stared, my blood freezing as I clenched my fists around the strap of my bag. “Enormous.”

“And that’s how much trouble you’ll be in if you don’t _get moving_ ,” I heard Coach Sylvester say as she appeared beside me, in a green and silver tracksuit. Azimio raised his eyebrows and retreated towards his class, and Coach angled her head in my direction sharply. “You too, Porcelain,” she said with a small smile. “Out of my sight.”

 

 

Rachel’s basement party was a bit pathetic until Puck started bartending, and I figured, _what the hell_ , got to get through the night somehow. I watched him line up shots on the counter, and Santana took two, handing one of them to Sam. Blaine was working, or I might have asked him if he wanted to join me in this monstrosity.

“So, Princess, how far have you gotten with Curly?” Puck asked over the music, as he poured lime, cranberry juice and vodka into a stainless steel cocktail shaker.

I groaned, chuckling, and decided not to chastise him about the nickname. “You’re gonna have to get me drunker for that information, Puckerman.”

Dumping the mixture into a red cup, he offered it to me with a wicked grin. “Challenge accepted.”

I shook my head at him and took it, raising the drink to my lips.

“How ‘bout this,” he said, reaching for a bottle of Jack. “I tell you one, you tell me one.” I raised my eyebrows. “Last week that brunette Breadstix waitress gave me an H.J. in the alley after her shift.”

I scowled at him and took a sip, the liquid burning in my throat as it went down, and coughed. “You just want to brag.” Puck nodded, smiling, and I sighed. “Blaine lives by himself.”

“Oh, you fuckin’ lucky dog.”

I rolled my eyes, taking another sip and letting his mind wander where it would.

Smirking, Puck shook his head. “Lauren Zizes made out with me in a broom closet the other day.”

“Blaine swallows,” I said simply, and tipped more from the cup into my mouth. I knew what guys talked about in the locker room—that would matter to him.

“Every time?” Puck asked, and I could see something close to _jealousy_ in his eyes.

I felt my lips twitch up, and I nodded once. I couldn’t believe I’d even said it—Puck put his cup down and reached for the bottle of Jack again, drinking straight from it. “Shit, Hummel. I only get that from one-night stands. Maybe I should—never mind.”

I laughed softly and peered back down into my cup. I didn’t know where all this was coming from, but somehow it felt like confidence, it felt good—even though I felt guilty for telling Puck things that weren’t any of his business, it kind of felt like fitting in.

I guess that’s what getting drunk in a friend’s basement is about anyway.

“God damn,” Puck said, snickering, and poured me a shot of tequila.

 

 

Blaine called from work the day after Rachel’s party—the ringer pounded in my head and I answered it as quickly as I could, which wasn’t very.

“Hi,” I began roughly, clearing my throat. “I think this is... no, this is my second hangover.”

Blaine laughed. “I take it you had a good time?”

“Meh. As good a time as I could manage with all the glee club drama and without my boyfriend.”

He hummed on the line. “Do you have a tomato in the house?”

“Uh... I think so?”

“Make yourself some toast, and eat the tomato raw. It’ll help. Slice it up and put some pepper on it.”

“Alright, thanks. I’ll try it once I can manage to, like, dress myself,” I said, and sighed, rubbing my face. “I should probably tell you that I may have bragged about you to Puck last night.”

“Mohawk?”

“Yeah,” I told him, chuckling. “He got me drunk and wanted to know about our sex life.”

“What did you tell him?” he asked, careful amusement in his voice.

“Sorry, I just... I made a comment about you that probably wasn’t very respectful... Let’s just say he’s jealous of me because you have so much enthusiasm orally and you live alone.” I hummed into the phone. “I think he was oddly proud of me. I don’t know. Tequila.”

Blaine snorted. “...Okay.”

Yawning, I scratched the back of my head. “I guess it’s just funny to me because two years ago he was tossing me into dumpsters every other day and nailing lawn furniture to my roof.”

“ _What?_ ”

“The glee club reformed him, honey, it’s okay,” I said softly. “He’s been chasing after the school’s heavyweight wrestling champion. You’d love her, she bosses him around.”

“Wait, _her?_ I’m not following any of this, Kurt.”

“I can’t follow it either, Blaine, but don’t worry about it. Am I still coming over tonight?”

“Yeah, seven, right?”

 

 

Stevie laid in the doorway like a guard, her head on her paws, as we watched a movie on Blaine’s laptop in bed. My eyelids were drooping though, and finally I let them close, pressing my face into my boyfriend’s hair.

I’d given him a blowjob that night. I could still taste it, slight and bitter next to my molars—and I could still feel it, just barely in the bones of my jaw, kneeling on the bed between his legs, gripping his hips in my hands as I stretched my mouth around him. Coughing a little when the tip of his cock hit the back of my throat, my eyes watering, and his fingers threading through my hair as he swiftly apologized.

I could still hear him, his hitched breathing and his voice that was just _wrecked_. The way he moaned when I added a hand to the part of his cock that my mouth couldn’t reach.

Even if I was just copying some of the things he’d done to me before, and relaxing my jaw the way he showed me, I _loved_ getting him so worked up over what I was doing, the way his fingers had gripped the sheets when they weren’t touching me—and when he was close and I was getting tired, I pulled off and teased him gently with my lips and tongue. There was something in his voice as he started to beg me to let him come that I just _knew_ was a combination of frustrated and thrilled, and I knew that meant I was doing something right. Feeling so powerful in such a subservient position was unexpected and _fantastic_.

My open mouth had followed his fingertips as they scooped some of his hot come from my cheek.

Blaine hit a key on his laptop and shifted against my chest, tilting his head back. “You fallin’ asleep on me?” he asked in my ear, rubbing his thumb over the back of my hand. I hummed half-heartedly and kissed his hair in response, and heard the laptop click shut. Blaine grumbled and then he was turning, burying his face in my chest.

“What d’you need, honeybee?” I asked softly, opening my eyes as I dug my fingers into his curls.

Blaine looked up, and reached one hand forward to stroke over my cheek. “I’ve got it.”

I grinned at him. “Charmer.”

“That’s my name, don’t wear—” Blaine started to say, until I smacked him, and he got up on his knees to kiss me.

 

 

**March**

I set Blaine’s dinner down in front of him just as Finn was seating himself at the table. Blaine looked up and smiled warmly at me as I did so, with my other hand curled around the back of his neck. I dropped a kiss to his hairline and went to get the salt and pepper shakers from the counter and some extra napkins. Carole grinned at me as she put together another plate and handed me my dad’s—he was washing his hands at the sink.

It was Friday Night Dinner at the Hummel-Hudsons, and my boyfriend was joining us.

“How are things going at your store, Blaine?” Carole asked, picking up her water glass after we had all sat down.

“Good,” Blaine said, finishing his bite of chicken before continuing. “This guy, he was maybe seventy-five, came in and bought an Eddy Arnold CD this morning, that cracked me up. He was so excited.”

“Oh, god,” Carole laughed. “My mother _adored_ Eddy Arnold.”

“Who’s this?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

“Oh, honey, he was a Nashville legend,” Carole said. “He had this... _yodeling_ thing, back in the fifties.”

Blaine snickered around a forkful of peas, nodding. I looked over at Finn, who seemed equally confused— _yodeling, really?_ —but only for a second before he turned back to his mashed potatoes.

“Did Kurt tell you guys about the time he caught a shoplifter for us?” Blaine asked with a smile.

Finn’s head snapped up. “Dude, seriously?”

I scoffed at both of them. “It wasn’t a big deal, I just saw a guy shoving a CD down the front of his pants and reported it.”

“But it was _Ke$ha_ —” Blaine snorted behind his hand.

“Does that happen a lot?” my dad asked.

Blaine frowned, putting down his fork. “It was worse at the Columbus location, definitely. Most people who want to steal music these days do it on the internet, though.”

“Blaine was very collected about it,” I said to Dad, before turning back to my boyfriend. “Very pro. Authoritative in a head waiter kind of way. It was quite impressive.”

“Oh, stop,” he chuckled, smacking my arm gently with his fingers.

“ _What?_ It’s true.”

 

 

Blaine lay beside me on his stomach, hugging one of my bed pillows, his chin propped on folded hands, and I smiled lazily down at him from where I was seated against the headboard. It was his day off work and he hadn’t done his hair, so I didn’t have to worry about getting his gel all over my hands and sheets.

Finn passed in the hall as I was brushing the curls off of Blaine’s forehead. “That was Burt on the phone earlier, he said they’d be back soon,” he called as he tromped down the stairs, and we tossed back vague _thankyou_ s, eyes not leaving each other.

Blaine nosed into my hand, his scratchy five o’clock tickling my skin as he opened his mouth to press a kiss to the heel of my palm. I hummed in response, and he pulled up on his elbows, leaning in to kiss my mouth instead.

“I’ve been thinking about something you said, before we got together,” I said quietly into Blaine’s ear as he curled his nearest arm over my ribs. “About you preferring to, um...” I laughed nervously, licking my lips.

Blaine raised his eyebrows, leaning back just enough to meet my eyes. “Bottom?” I nodded, touching our foreheads together, and Blaine bit his lip, rubbing my side. “That’s okay with you, right?”

“Yes, Blaine,” I said, nodding, laughing again.

He grinned in relief. “What have you been thinking about it?” I blushed, and with his proximity, Blaine could probably feel the heat. “Kurt, communication is key here,” he said teasingly, kissing beneath my jaw. “Tell me.”

“Is that... something we can try? Like, not right this minute, obviously, but...”

“Eventually, or...?” he offered, popping back up in my line of vision.

“I was going to say _soon_ ,” I choked, and Blaine surged forward, dragging our lips together.

“ _Hell_ yes, Kurt,” he groaned as he released me, my fingers lingering in his hair. “Uh... Are you sure? Do you think you’re ready for that?”

I nodded slowly. “I mean, I’ll need you to help me, but I know that I want you, and I want to make you happy, and I want to go further with you than what we’ve done so far, so.”

Blaine hummed, his hand sliding across my waist. “I am entirely down with that if it’s what you want.”

I snorted, and his face split into a grin before he swooped in again, hauling me down the bed by my hips until I was lying beside him, and covered the side of my face with kisses. When I tucked my knees up to my chest in half-hearted defense, Blaine just pressed one to the side and settled between my thighs.

Right as I started to bring my legs up to lock my ankles together behind his back, though, we heard the garage door open. Blaine and I both sighed, sitting up and fixing each other’s hair.

I smirked as we sat on the edge of the bed. “Good talk.”

He cracked up beside me and kissed my cheek.

 

 

Blaine was a little ashamed to admit to me that he had looked up the age of consent laws for the state of Ohio months ago. Luckily, I was almost a year and a half over that, so we were safe.

I cleaned up before coming over—put on my best jeans, the ones that Blaine couldn’t keep his eyes off, and a shirt he had complimented before. I went easy on the product in my hair so that Blaine would be able to dig his hands into it, and refrained from wearing the knee-high lace-up boots that worked so well with those jeans.

Blaine had hummed low in his throat at the front door as he looked me up and down, undressing me in his mind, wetting his lips. With a crooked grin, I swatted his ass, and followed my nose into the kitchen. There was an empty can of marinara on the counter—Blaine had made spaghetti, and added onion and pepper flakes and tapenade and meatballs to the simmering pan until it felt like a home-cooked meal.

“Now, this can go one of two ways,” Blaine said, wrapping an arm around my waist and kissing my neck. “We can have dinner now, or we can have it later. I haven’t started the pasta yet.”

I smirked at him. “I suppose if we really want to _savor_ the meal...”

“We should work up an appetite?” Blaine supplied, raising his eyebrows. “The sauce’ll taste better the longer it simmers, and I don’t know about you, but fucking on a full belly of pasta sounds less than appetizing. I could’ve thought the menu through better, but—”

I snorted and grabbed his sides, tickling him. “Oh my god, you’re such a horny _dork_.”

Blaine’s wide grin as he kissed me was the only reply I got, and he took my hands, stepping backwards toward his bedroom, pulling me gently with him. I could hear my blood pumping in my ears, double-time.

“You sure?” he asked as we kissed next to his dresser, his thumbs rubbing into my forearms, before they moved up to my cheeks.

“Yeah,” I said with a shaky nod against his lips, hooking my fingers in his belt loops. “It’s all I’ve been able to think about.”

Blaine hummed back. “You have no idea.”

My fingers found his belt buckle then, and when I raised my eyebrows at him— _can I?_ —Blaine chuckled, nodding. I undid it quickly, popping his fly and pausing at the zipper. Blaine met my eyes then, his fingers trailing down my chest, fingering my shirt buttons. He fitted one deftly back through its hole, freeing a section of my neck, and leaned in to kiss it gently before pressing another below my jaw.

“Take your time,” he said softly.

His forehead pressed to mine as I drew his zipper down.

Instead of tugging Blaine’s pants down over his hips, though, I reached next for the hem of the dark green sweater he wore. He helped me pull it over his head, Blaine’s undershirt sticking to it and going as well. I kissed him again when it was cast aside, letting his fingers work on my shirt buttons. One of my hands rested flat on his chest, playing with the coarse, dark hair there until Blaine had my shirt wide open. He drew it down my shoulders and pulled at the cuffs, finally laying it over the top of his dresser. I touched his waistband then, through another kiss, and he shucked off his jeans, leaving the underwear.

Blaine smiled. “Round one is your choice,” he purred, his hands finding the small of my back and pulling our hips together. “How do you want me?”

I laughed, running my hands up his arms. “Anything we’ve done is fine with me.”

Promptly dropping to his knees, Blaine worked my belt open as I carded my fingers through his hair. He dragged my jeans down my thighs, and I held onto his shoulders as he helped me step out of them. “You’ve got such a gorgeous body, Kurt,” he smiled, kissing below my navel after he had folded my pants and set them aside. He let his gaze linger on my boxer briefs and upper thighs before he looked back up at me. Blaine’s eyes were dark; the visual was so entirely sexual, so out-of-a-dream, and his hands drug up the back of my thighs, sliding under the fabric, as he leaned forward as if to mouth over my dick, which was pressing ardently toward him through the cotton.

But then he stood, taking my hand, and led me to the bed. Untucking the duvet cover, he threw it to the floor on the other side, and gestured for me to lie down. I did so with no hesitance, drinking in the view of his tanned skin.

“If you knew how much time I’ve spent thinking about this...” Blaine whispered, climbing onto the bed after me and kneeling on the sheets between my legs. He explored my chest with his hands, leaning down over me.

“You’re so good for my ego,” I told him as he kissed at my pecs, and felt him smirk against my skin.

“No, I just want you to fuck me,” he said.

My head snapped up. “ _Excuse me?_ ”

Blaine laughed. “I’m just kidding.”

I grabbed his arms firmly and wrapped my legs around him, flipping him onto his back and sitting on his abs. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, Anderson. You’re going to tell me what that’s about.”

Blaine pressed his lips together, trying and failing to hold in a grin. “Wha—I mean, Kurt, of course I mean every word, every little thing I could say about you. You’re fuckin’ gorgeous. I just want—”

He lifted his hands toward my thighs, but I smacked them away with a smirk. “What? What is it that you want?”

He sobered then. “Exactly what you’re doing now. Not being afraid, because you know that I think you’re sexy.”

I raised my eyebrows, sitting back, hands on my hips. “Tell me more.”

“Your confidence, your _strength_ , is the hottest thing about you, Kurt. I need you to feel secure and—I don’t know, in charge of yourself? _Especially_ when we’re having sex.”

“Ah,” I said, and nodded. “So you’re giving me positive reinforcement?”

Blaine scoffed, squinting his eyes at me as he shook his head. “No. You’re not Stevie.”

“ _So don’t be a bitch?_ ” I finished for him, staring him down, trying not to smile.

He burst out laughing. “Jesus Christ, you’re sexy. I’m sorry, Kurt, I—ugh, I’m an asshole.”

“No you’re not,” I said softly, before I leaned down and kissed him, threading our fingers together and pulling his hands above his head. “I love your compliments.”

“Good.” Blaine smiled, humming against my lips. “Now, bring your dick up here and let me show him my appreciation.”

 

 

I shifted into a cross-legged position at the foot of Blaine’s bed, truly nervous for the first time since I had arrived. “Okay, how do we want to do this?”

“Well, there are some options,” he started, spreading a towel over the middle of the bed. “You’ll have the most freedom to move if I’m on my hands and knees, so that’s probably what we should do to start with. We can adjust if it’s uncomfortable.”

I nodded, biting my lip. Blaine planted a kiss on my temple, and opened the drawer of his bedside table, taking out a box of condoms and a tube of lubricant. He opened the box and pulled two out, tossing them on the bed.

I picked one of them up, peering down at the label.

“You’re not allergic to latex, are you?” he asked.

I shook my head, dropping the condom back onto his sheets.

“Kurt.” I looked up, and Blaine took my face between both of his hands. “Don’t worry.” Nodding, I pulled him in to kiss me, and sighed into his mouth. “Should we dim the lights? Mood music?” he asked, smiling before pecking my lips again.

Somehow I knew I wouldn’t want to see every detail of this. “Mmm, lights,” I said, and as Blaine got up to do so, he handed me the lube. I read that label carefully as well, before popping the cap.

Blaine switched off the ceiling lights, and we were in the dark until he turned on the bedside lamp, a warm yellow settling over the sage green sheets. The mattress shifted as he climbed back onto the bed, and he slumped against the headboard, beckoning to me with his hands.

“I trust you,” he said softly as I reached him. “Just relax, go slow, it’ll be fine. I know you know how to use your body. It’ll come naturally.”

I choked on a laugh at that, and he joined me before pulling me in for another kiss. Blaine wrapped his hand around my dick, stroking gently as my lips moved down to his neck. Without much help at all I was fully hard again, thrusting shallowly into his fingers, and as I trailed my own down from Blaine’s belly button, his breath shook.

Blaine reached for one of the condoms, waving it in front of me before tearing open the wrapper and pulling it out. “Rule number one,” he murmured, and I squirmed as he placed it over the head of my dick, pinching the end as he dragged it down.

He let go of me then, turning over, and put the lube back in my unsteady hands. “Rub it to warm it up first, please,” he said with a soft smile, stacking the two bed pillows and sinking his upper body against them. He turned his head to watch me, ass in the air.

The jelly _was_ cold.

I rubbed it in my hand like he said, and took a deep breath in as Blaine spread his knees. He wriggled a little as I let it out, and I sniggered, kneeling between his calves, spreading his cheeks.

I slid my middle finger down the crease of his ass first, circling the hole gently, tentatively, and Blaine gasped, arching his back. He nodded vigorously, and I used more pressure, spreading the lube around and pushing my middle finger in, just to the first knuckle. I paused, and when Blaine said nothing, I went further. That first finger sank in all the way a lot quicker than I anticipated, and Blaine let out a soft moan, his hands grasping the sheets. I pulled most of my finger out slowly before pressing it back in, twisting.

He was pushing back against me, and after a while I was able to join him in a kind of rhythm.

“Another,” he panted, his hand reaching back to brush against my leg, and Blaine whined as I pulled my finger out. Leaning down, I pressed a kiss to his hip and reached for the lube again, squeezing more onto my fingers.

Pushing my index and middle fingers in together was harder to do, and I twisted them carefully, working them in and out of his ass until they slid more easily.

“Feel around,” Blaine said, breathing hard. “There’s...”

Curling my fingers, I traced over the walls inside him, until he arched his back again, letting out a long sigh, his eyes closed, eyelashes fanning out against his skin.

“ _That_ ,” he breathed, and I massaged the area until his whole body was trembling.

“Blaine,” I whispered, rubbing my dick against his inner thigh. “Tell me what it feels like.”

He hummed into the pillow, and turned his head to look back at me. “It’s... fantastic, not something I can describe. I’ll show you sometime. Prostate.”

I nodded, before smiling and dragging my fingers out most of the way, and slamming them right back in.

Blaine made a groan like I’d punched him in the stomach, and then he laughed a little. “Now who’s a pro? God damn, yes please.”

Adding a third finger not long after, I picked up the rhythm with his hips again, and once Blaine had been reduced to a whimpering mess, pressing his face into the sheets, I asked him if that was enough.

“I’m ready, Kurt,” he gasped out, nodding.

I pulled my fingers out and I wiped them on the towel before stroking the cheeks of his ass gently, and wrapped my other hand around my dick, getting the excess lube on it. Sitting taller on my knees, I lined up, and my breath shook as I took both of Blaine’s hips into my hands, rubbing his skin with my thumbs. I looked to him for a reaction, a nod, anything.

“Go for it,” he panted. “Slow.”

And I pushed in.

 

 

Blaine spoke in strung-together nothings when he came, only just making it onto the towel. I’d barely had the presence of mind to stroke him off—his hand eventually joined mine as he kept up with my thrusts, our skin slapping together, until he let go and fisted the sheets to keep himself upright. His voice was raw and encouraging, and hearing my name fall from his lips in that context was staggering—I wanted to hear and watch him fall apart like that _forever_.

After I had pulled out of him, Blaine hummed deep in his throat as he rolled onto his back, and watched as I carefully removed the condom and tied it off. Cringing, I dangled it between my fingertips, and Blaine half-stumbled off the bed to bring me a trash can before folding the towel over and resuming his previous position, lacing his fingers together behind his head.

I stretched out next to Blaine, resting my ear against his bicep. “Forgive me for sounding presumptuous, but you’re facing me next time,” I informed him.

Blaine smiled. “Oh yeah?”

I nodded, resting my forearm over his abs, my hand bent away from his skin. “All that noise you were making? I wanted to see your expression.”

Chuckling, he pressed his lips to my hairline. “Good.”

“You’re very responsive,” I added quietly, rolling in to tuck my forehead against his neck. Blaine unfolded his hands to wrap an arm around my shoulders, and I snuggled closer to him. “Dinner in an hour?”

He nodded, humming. “Sounds great.”

Blaine got up a while later to boil water for the pasta, and when we finally sat down with our meal, freshly showered and two-thirds dressed, Blaine looked across the table at me and smiled.

“What?” I asked him softly, twirling my fork with a little smirk.

He shook his head. “Smug looks good on you.”

I chuckled, bringing my forkful of pasta to my mouth.

 

 

It felt weird to have made such a big decision without talking to my dad about it first, and subsequently feeling like I needed to keep it a secret from him. It felt like lying by omission, even if I didn’t spend much time talking to my dad about my relationship with Blaine at all.

I didn’t know if there would be a blaring neon sign on my forehead that only he could see— _HEY, I HAD ANAL SEX WITH MY BOYFRIEND_ —and at the same time it almost seemed as simple as _I’m growing up._

And I wasn’t sure if my dad was even ready for that last part.

Opening the French doors to my backyard, Blaine let Stevie outside, and we followed her. She crossed the patio and romped around in the grass, her tongue lolling out as she looked back at us and barked—we were just standing there instead of _playing_ , what a travesty!

I laughed softly, wrapping my arms around Blaine from behind, chin over his shoulder. He leaned back into me, turning his head to nuzzle against my cheek.

“I’m a bit surprised she doesn’t sap all your energy,” I told him with a smile.

“Well, between the two of you, daily caffeine will just have to keep me from falling asleep on the job,” he smirked, touching my ribs as he turned to kiss me. “Hold that thought.”

Blaine stepped out of my arms then, joining Stevie on the lawn. She grinned, barking again, bowing and wagging her whole rear end, and when he charged at her with jazz hands, she spun around in a circle before bounding away from him.

I heard a knock behind me, and turned to find Dad in the back doorway, the mail in his hand. “Hey, kiddo,” he said, and snorted at Blaine and his dog. “They’re not all that different, are they?”

When I looked back toward Blaine, he was on his knees, with Stevie up on her hind legs, paws on his shoulders as he tried to push her away. Blaine sat back on his heels, and Stevie head-butted him, effectively knocking him down and onto his back, yelping.

“No, not particularly,” I agreed fondly.

“K.O.,” Dad said under his breath as Stevie climbed over her master, licking his face.

“Oh my god, _get off_ , you big lug,” Blaine sniggered through a groan, and looked up at us. “Afternoon, Mr. Hummel.”

“You’re going to get grass stains, Blaine,” I called to him, smiling at my dad before sighing dramatically and going over to help. “Stevie, come here.”

 

 

Blaine and Finn actually ended up getting along pretty well, and occasionally I would come downstairs after finishing getting ready for a date and Blaine would be on the edge of the living room couch, glued to a football game with him. Once he ended up actually _in Finn’s room_ , and I had to go looking for them—Blaine was seated at Finn’s drumset, and they were talking about Keith Moon. Upon seeing me in the doorway, Blaine had grinned, and handed the drumsticks back to my stepbrother.

Blaine spent more and more time at our house, to the point that he’d open the fridge without asking and he knew where things were if we were cooking.

Blaine was shirtless and asleep on my bed one day when Dad got home from work, and I was at my desk studying—honestly, I didn’t even think about it when he opened the door and saw Blaine lying there, shoes on the floor and face halfway under one of my pillows.

“Kurt,” he started from the doorway, and I glanced up from my notes on the Civil War.

“Hi, Dad,” I said, flipping the page. “Carole called, she’s gonna be home late. I put one of those chicken enchiladas in the oven.”

“Kurt,” he said again.

I put my pen down and gave him my full attention.

“Wanna tell me what this is about?” he asked, gesturing to my boyfriend.

“Oh,” I said. “Blaine came over after work and we hung out for a while, and now I’m doing homework and he’s taking a nap.”

“Uh huh,” he said. “Well, when he wakes up, I wanna talk to you guys.”

I nodded. “Okay.” _Shit._

Dad retreated down the hall, and when I heard his feet on the stairs, I turned in my chair to look at Blaine, who was still asleep. He’d been exhausted when he arrived at my house, and I’d been all too happy to lead him up to my room and kiss him for a while before letting him sleep.

I sat down on the edge of the mattress and smoothed my hand over his shoulderblades—he was lying on his stomach. Ducking down to kiss the side of his head, I said his name.

Blaine hummed, smiling as one of his hands found my lap and slid between my knees. “Hey, baby,” he mumbled, opening his eyes. He turned onto his side and opened his arms. “C’mere, cuddle with me.” The lazy warmth in his voice made me lose all nervousness about what I had to tell him, and sighing, I complied, lying down and tucking my face into his neck.

“Thought you didn’t want to call me baby,” I said in his ear, as he tugged one of my legs over his hip.

Blaine inhaled deeply beneath my jaw. “Yeah, well,” he grumbled as he slid his one of his thighs between mine. “It’s what I call you in my head,” he said with a shrug, as if that explained everything.

I rested my head back on the pillow, smiling as he closed his eyes again. “My dad wants to _have a talk_ with us,” I told him, and waited for recognition to dawn.

Blaine rolled over then, rubbing his eyes. “When?”

“When you wake up, so, soon,” I chuckled. “I’ve been wondering when he would sit us down.”

 

 

“So, when you guys got together, after all that stuff with that Karofsky kid, I was so focused on making sure you were safe at school, Kurt, that I didn’t really think about monitoring you two’s relationship or setting much in the way of boundaries.” My dad looked down at his hands from where he sat in the living room, clearly uncomfortable but not without purpose. “I also realize,” he said, clearing his throat, “that two or three months in isn’t the right time to do that, either, so why don’t you guys tell me what you think is reasonable and we can work from there.”

I looked over at Blaine, who was itching at the back of his neck with his fingers.

“I guess I also have no idea what level your relationship is actually at now,” my dad continued, “and I know what going backwards from that is like.”

“We’re always careful,” I said softly.

“What do you mean by that?” Dad asked.

“I mean... We don’t fool around in the back of cars, and we use condoms—”

“You’re having sex?”

“Um.” I stared at the carpet, blushing, knowing he meant _penetrative_. “Only recently.”

“Where?”

“At Blaine’s apartment. If it makes you feel better, Dad, I was the one who initiated that.”

“It doesn’t matter who—” His brow furrowed as he looked at Blaine. “I think you understand how much influence you have on this relationship. You’re twenty-four. Your decisions are for the both of you.”

Blaine nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ve always tried to be very conscious of what Kurt wants and needs from me.”

“ _Almost to a fault_ ,” I added. “He’s been really good for me, Dad.”

“You sing in the kitchen again,” Dad said, his lips pressing into a thin line.

Finn walked through the living room and toward the stairs with a thick portion of enchilada on a plate. He nodded to us, and Blaine waved.

“Eat that down here, Finn,” Dad said. “You wanna scrub it out of the carpet tomorrow?”

Sighing heavily, Finn plopped down in a chair across from us, and my dad frowned, because _sitting with us_ is not what he meant.

“What are we talking so seriously about?” Finn asked, taking a huge bite and chewing.

“Maybe you can help us with this, Finn,” my dad said. “What have your mom’s rules been about you and Rachel, and Quinn, regarding intimacy?”

“You mean like sex?” he asked, mouth full.

Dad’s eyes closed as he breathed out. “Yes, Finn.”

Blaine was holding in a grin beside me, and I felt his fingers grip my knee.

“Uh, well, Quinn never let me do anything when we were together, and Rachel... I mean, we don’t have to keep the door open, but I mean... I’ve barely felt her up, so that’s... I’m not very lucky in that area. Her dads are what Rachel calls ‘sex-positive,’ or something, but—”

“Okay, Finn.”

“Did I help?”

“Yes, that was great, thank you.”

“Awesome.” He smiled and stood, returning to the kitchen with his plate.

I couldn’t help feeling pleased with myself—I was getting way more sex in quality and quantity than my popular jock of a stepbrother, something I never thought I’d be able to say, at least not while still living at home. I side-eyed Blaine, and he smiled softly, elbowing me, reading my mind. I wrapped my hands around his arm.

“Well, now that we have that out of the way,” Dad said, trailing off and sighing at the carpet. “Basically, if your relationship is healthy, I guess that’s the most important thing. All I can really do without making an ass out of myself is to check in, make sure you’re being safe and considering your actions. That you’re not just using each other as a means to an end, or anything like that.”

“Wow, Mr. Hummel,” Blaine said from beside me.

“What?”

“It’s just...” He looked down at his lap. “Thank you. My dad never said anything like that to me.”

“Hold up, now, Blaine, I wasn’t finished.”

“Oh.”

“That doesn’t mean I approve of my son having sex at seventeen with someone... _seven_ years his senior. That’s a very big difference.” Blaine and I nodded, and Dad sighed, rubbing his forehead. “I can’t very well tell you guys to stop, Kurt, you would just lie to me.”

“No, I wouldn’t, Dad—”

“ _Yes_ , you would, that or you’d hate me, and I wouldn’t blame you.”

I bit my lip. “So what are you going to do?”

Dad sighed. “Blaine, how many relationships have you been in? If you don’t mind my asking.”

Blaine’s eyebrows furrowed. “Three that counted, I guess, yeah.”

“And when were those?”

“During college and after it, when I was still living in Columbus.”

“And in these relationships, in college, you didn’t have to deal with dating guys who still lived at home, and that had much less experience and exposure than you, and that were too young to legally drink?”

“...I don’t drink, sir.”

“And why’s that?”

“It turns me into someone I don’t like. I try to stay away from alcohol.”

“Okay, but you understand the point I’m trying to make, don’t you.”

“Yes.”

“So, why my son?”

Blaine looked up and met my eyes, and then my father’s. “I hope I haven’t given off the impression that I’m in this relationship purely for the sex, Mr. Hummel.”

“Just tell me why, Blaine.”

“We’ll be here for a while.”

By some miracle, Dad smiled. “Then give me the basics.”

“Well...” Blaine began, fitting his hand over mine, and our eyes met. One side of his mouth twisted up into a smile, and he rubbed his thumb over the back of my hand. “Kurt’s determined, and direct, and strong. He challenges me and doesn’t let me get away with much. I’m... in awe of him most of the time.” Blaine paused then, and I turned my hand over to interlace our fingers.

“Is that all?” Dad asked, and Blaine looked up.

“No, after that there’s a few things that I shouldn’t say out loud,” he said, his neck flushing. “And the fact that he’s different from any guy I’ve ever met, and gorgeous as all get-out.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I want Kurt to be really happy, and whether or not we’re in a romantic relationship, I want to be there for him.”

My dad nodded. “Good.”

“Good?”

“Don’t get cocky, kid.”


	6. Act II: Easier To Bear, Part III

**April**

When I really want something, whether it’s justifying a very expensive purchase or convincing my father to let me do something, I like to make a list of reasons why it’s a good idea, and present them with my request. Do it sporadically enough to make it sound like I don’t ask for much, and be as confident, mature and unemotional in my approach as possible.

“Dad?” I started, stepping into the kitchen. “Is it okay if I go up to Columbus with Blaine next Saturday? He got me recording time at a studio for Christmas and I want to use it.”

Except I didn’t feel like I had much of a list for this.

Dad blew on his cup of coffee before setting it down. “Oh?”

“Yes. It’ll be spring break then, I’ll be done with finals, and... I mean, it’s only a couple of hours away. His mother wants us to come over for dinner afterwards.”

“Huh.” My dad frowned, considering, drawing it out. I bit my lip. “Do well on those finals, get at least a B in everything, and then we’ll talk, alright?”

I knew that the smile in his eyes beneath the gruff exterior meant _yes_. “Thanks, Dad.”

He scoffed. “S’all I’m good for.”

“I love you!”

“Love you too, kiddo. Scram.”

 

 

“So, I’ve been putting together a playlist of all the songs I want to record on Saturday,” I told Blaine as I sautéed a pile of baby spinach in a skillet on his stove.

Blaine hummed, his fingers settling around my hips as he kissed the back of my neck. “Oh yeah?”

I nodded and squeezed a fresh lemon quarter over the spinach. “ _Defying Gravity, Le Jazz Hot, Don’t Cry For Me Argentina_ , and...” The timer on the oven sounded, and I elbowed Blaine gently. “Can you get the salmon out, please?”

He moved to comply, grabbing the mitts from the countertop and opening the oven to retrieve the broiler pan. “This needs more of that sauce on it, right?” he asked as he set it on a potholder on the counter.

“Yes. And then five more minutes.” I turned down the heat under the spinach and lifted the lid covering the rice, letting the steam escape, before turning to watch Blaine use a brush to spread peanut sauce from a teacup over the fish. I beamed at him as he finished. “I’m also going to sing _Edelweiss_.”

Blaine looked up, and shook his head at me as he smiled back.

“What?” I asked, turning to fluff the rice with a fork.

“You’re just...” He trailed off, chuckling, and opened the oven door to put the broiler pan back inside. I heard him close it and set the timer again, and a few seconds later Blaine appeared beside me, turning off the spinach and turning me in his arms, still beaming.

“What?” I repeated more softly, running my hands over Blaine’s chest.

“I’m just really, really glad that you’re here, and you’re mine,” he said, his fingers tucking under the hem of my shirt. “And I love it when you sing.” Blaine hummed as he kissed me. “Do you want me to clear the table?”

Several of my textbooks and pages of class notes were laid open on Blaine’s kitchen table, waiting for me to return and finish studying, though my reasoning for why there would be fewer distractions at my boyfriend’s apartment than at my own house had to be flawed.

“No, I’ll do it,” I told him, and took two plates out of the cabinet and handed them to him. “You dish up the rice.”

 

 

I did my vocal warm-ups in the car on the way to Columbus, and Blaine teased me a little, smiling as I ran through scales there in the passenger seat.

“Do you think your mom will like me?” I asked as we got closer to the city, and bit my lip as I fiddled with Blaine’s car stereo and the iPod jack.

“Of course she will,” Blaine said. “She’ll probably ask you to sing for her, and then she’ll tell me all of the horrible things she’d do to me if I ever broke up with you.” I chuckled, sitting back in the seat, and he smiled warmly, taking one hand off of the wheel to wrap it around mine.

“Does she know how old I am?” I asked as I stroked his wrist.

“Yes. I told her about you over Christmas—she demanded to know who I was zoning out about.”

I smirked. “Uh-huh.”

 

 

The tech guy at Ladybird Studios went to high school with Blaine—they hugged tightly at the door until Blaine stepped back to introduce me.

“Hey, I’m Jeff,” he’d said, with all the enthusiasm of Stevie on a good day, and showed us around. They had a full setup for analog and digital recording, isolation booths, the whole nine yards. A beautiful grand piano sat in the live room with a thick blanket over it, and Blaine tinkled the keys as we walked through.

Before we entered the control room, Jeff unlocked a cabinet full of microphones. “Be nice to this,” he said to me as he selected one for vocals. “It’s worth more than my car.” He took it out of its case and carried it into one of the booths, hooking it up to a mic stand and switching it on. When I stepped up to it, he adjusted it slightly for my height and gave me a broad smile. “Blaine tells me you’re quite the singer. Gonna blow my socks off?”

“I hope so. Do you like musical theatre?”

“Some,” he said, handing me a pair of headphones. “But I’ll appreciate quality even if I don’t recognize it.”

I smiled back and slid the headphones on. Blaine’s voice filled my ears after a moment, and I looked up. He was holding a button down in the control room and waving at me. “Can you hear me?”

I nodded, adjusting the headphones, and stepped up closer to the mic. “Hi, Blaine.” He frowned, though, and looked down at the equipment. Jeff left the room and joined Blaine, poking around on the computer, and pressed a different button from the hundreds that seemed to be in there.

“Try it again, Kurt,” Jeff said.

I lifted my hands to the cups of the headphones. “Hi.”

“There you are,” Blaine said softly. “What are you singing for us first?”

I smiled through the glass at him. “It so happens that your favorite song about white flowers from the Alps would be much better for my voice to start with than _Don’t Cry For Me Argentina_.”

 

 

Blaine’s slightly-harried mother answered the door with a warm smile and hugs, before explaining quickly that she was babysitting for the next half hour or so, and that we could make ourselves comfortable while she finished dinner, shooing away our offers to help.

Blaine’s six-year-old niece, Mackenzie, came running to hug him as we entered the kitchen. She was immediately scooped up into his arms, and after he put a big loud kiss on her cheek, she blew a raspberry at him. “Hey, now,” he said with false irritation, “have you had your ribs counted yet today?”

Her eyes widened, and she shrieked, pushing against his grip on her and grinning. “Please, _nooooo_ , Uncle Blaine, nononono—please, ugh. _No tickling_.”

“I don’t know,” he said, a sing-song lilt to his voice as he smiled at her, holding her securely. “I think I need to make sure they’re all still there. It’s been a while since I last saw you.” The little girl huffed, frowning at him as she covered the front of her purple dress with her arms. They stared at each other momentarily until he laughed and kissed her forehead. “Love you.”

“I love you too,” she sighed, rolling her eyes. “Now, _let me down_.”

“Hold on just one sec,” he said, turning to me. “I want you to meet somebody. Kenzie, this is Kurt.”

“Hi, Mackenzie,” I said, offering a hand for her to shake. “I like your dress.”

“Thank you,” she said, taking it. “It’s OshKosh.”

“ _Really?_ ” I said, and Blaine grinned broadly at me, holding in a laugh.

She nodded, turning back to look at her uncle, tugging on his sleeve. “Can I go now? Gramma got me My Little Ponies.”

He sighed and bounced her in his arms before putting her down.

“Oh my god, she’s gonna be a label queen,” I said in Blaine’s ear, and he turned to kiss my cheek.

 

 

“I spoke to your father last week, Blaine,” Mrs. Anderson said carefully as I was spearing green beans on my fork. “He’s going to be in Lima on business sometime in the next couple of weeks.”

Blaine stiffened, and looked up. “What did you tell him?”

“He wanted to know how I thought you’d react to him dropping in to Trax.”

“ _What did you tell him?_ ” Blaine repeated.

“I told him it depended on what he had to say,” she said. “But I vaguely encouraged him to do so if he wanted to have an _actual_ conversation with you.”

“Oh, that would be _so_ professional, Mom, for me to have a blowout with him in the middle of my fucking store,” he said, seething.

“Blaine. He’ll be in town in the middle of the day, he said he would have a couple of hours between meetings and—”

“What day is he coming in?” he interrupted. I rested my hand on Blaine’s thigh under the table, squeezing gently, and his eyes flickered to mine, and softened.

“He didn’t say. But just, with what happened at Christmas and everything...”

Blaine fitted a hand over mine. “Dad’s known that I’m gay for what, _eight years?_ Four months won’t have made a bit of difference. I am a disgrace to him.”

“But maybe if—”

“No, Mom. I won’t put myself through it again, and I won’t let Kurt watch me drink myself stupid the way I always do after I see him.”

“You think I don’t hate it just as much as you do? That you can’t have a normal father-son relationship with him because he’s narrow-minded and won’t _grow up?_ ” She sighed heavily, looking down at the table, and finally back up at me. “God, I’m sorry, Kurt. You shouldn’t have to hear this.”

“I... It’s okay.”

“No, no it’s not,” she said, shaking her head, and forced a smile onto her face. “Do you like lemon bars? I made some.”

Blaine had done the same thing to me before—hidden his emotions, apologized for showing them. My dad and I had always been fairly straightforward about things when they mattered as much as something like this, and Carole was too. I wanted to hear Blaine’s mother talk about this like it was something that affected her.

“With all due respect, ma’am, if it affects Blaine, I want to hear about it,” I said, as she was pushing her chair back to stand, and she paused, her hands on the table. “I want to understand.”

 

 

When we got back late that night, Blaine came inside for a little while, even though he was exhausted. Stevie had stayed at my house with Finn that day, and after Blaine greeted her and apologized for being gone so long, we sat down at the kitchen table. Blaine rested his cheek against his arms, holding my hand, and I rubbed my thumb over his knuckles.

“I feel like an ass trying to tell you not to think about it,” I said.

“You have a nice ass,” he mumbled back, smiling softly.

I smirked, humoring him, letting him deflect. “Yours isn’t half bad either.”

Puck and Finn entered the room to raid the fridge then—they’d been playing video games in the living room when we got in.

“Hey, guys,” I said, looking up. “Dad’s been eyeing the Kettle chips, so feel free to eat them.”

Finn smiled. “Cool. How did recording go?”

“It was good. I’ll make you a copy later.”

Puck snagged the chips out of a cabinet and popped one in his mouth. I turned back to Blaine—he was watching Stevie, who was watching the chips.

“Can she have one?” Puck asked.

Blaine shrugged, trying for another smile. “Might as well.” He met my eyes again before his drooped a little. “Spoiled rotten.”

“Go home and go to bed, honey,” I said softly.

“But it’s _empty_ ,” he whined, pulling himself out of the chair and me into his arms, swaying slightly. I went willingly, closing my eyes as I wrapped my arms around him.

“It’ll be plenty full this week,” I said quietly in his ear. “Spring break, remember?”

Blaine sighed, humming and kissing my neck. “Lucky me.”

I chuckled at him as we walked out of the kitchen. “You need me to wake you up a little, so you don’t drive into a ditch?” There was a loud snort from the kitchen, and I smirked. “You’re such a bad influence,” I told Blaine, elbowing him.

He grinned as we reached the front door, and whistled for his dog before kissing my forehead. “See you later, babe.”

 

 

Indeed, spring break had me stretched out across Blaine’s sheets, both of us sweating, the window cracked open even though the blinds were firmly closed. We’d been alternating between sex and snacking and snuggling in various areas of the apartment for most of the afternoon, and my limbs were plenty loose, my entire being pliant under his hands.

“It’s time for your prostate exam,” Blaine snickered with a sloppy kiss to my neck, and when I laughed at him, he pushed me into his mattress as his lips moved down my torso. Kneeling in front of me, Blaine drew one of my legs up to his shoulder, plucked the lube from the bed beside him and squeezed some onto his fingers.

 _I’m not going to fuck you tonight_ , he’d said earlier, _I just want you to feel this. But you can definitely ask me to later, if you so wish_.

Sealing his lips over a section of skin below my ribcage, Blaine bit down gently as his fingers tucked behind my balls and my knee hooked easily behind his neck. He shushed me softly, feeling my nervous excitement, before he brought out his tongue to lave over the faint mark he’d left above my hipbone.

And then Blaine’s fingers were _right there_ , circling and teasing the opening until I went limp against the sheets, and Blaine smiled as his jaw grazed against the tip of my cock—it twitched slightly as he ran his lips up the skin, and Blaine looked up at me with a grin, humming when I ran my fingertips over his scalp.

His middle finger worked its way inside first, and I was tensing up, gripping his hair, gasping around him despite the pleasantly warm lube, and Blaine’s other hand stroked my thigh. “Hey, I’ve got you,” he whispered into my skin. “Don’t think about it, Kurt. _Feel_ me. Breathe.”

Letting myself grow heavy, I closed my eyes and nodded, loosening my grip on his hair, inhaling deeply as Blaine pressed a second finger in. I forced myself to relax through the stretch, and as Blaine ducked down to spread his tongue over my balls, he crooked his fingers toward what _had_ to be—

And _dear god_ , I wanted to fall apart.

He was working his way back up my body as I was arching mine towards him, noises coming out of me that I wasn’t proud of, folding myself over as he was catching my left nipple with his teeth and kissing at my throat. I was panting under him, and as my eyes slipped closed, his fingers continued to massage inside—I _moaned_ at him, and Blaine smiled into my skin.

“What is it, babe,” he murmured. “Feels good, huh?” My breath shook as I sighed, nodding, and he chuckled.

“Don’t make fun,” I breathed back at him.

Blaine just tutted, his teeth grazing over my earlobe. “I wish you could see yourself right now,” he said in my ear, kissing it. “I feel... so privileged, Kurt.”

“Nguh,” I replied, rocking my hips onto his fingers again as I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Y’should.”

I began bucking against his body then, getting a leg around his hip to leverage myself on his fingers as we _tried_ to kiss but mostly breathed on each other—Blaine’s lips and teeth were against my neck, and our cocks were rubbing, and the stimuli was fucking _killing_ me. His thick fingers dragged and twisted, in and out, bringing me to the brink before backing off, and when I growled at him— _come_ on _, Blaine!_ —he finally gave my prostate all the attention it could handle and wrapped his other hand around my dick. He knew just the way, where to emphasize the pressure, and after a few strokes I swore loudly, spilled over our skin in bursts, and melted into the sheets with his fingers still inside, my chest heaving, my eyes unfocused.

Blaine knelt there between my legs as I came down, and he pulled his fingers out, slowly, gingerly, and wiped them off. His eyes were on my spent cock as my vision cleared and I tucked my calves around his waist, and they crept up my body as his hand wrapped around his own erection.

“Come,” I breathed to him, beckoning with my fingers before reaching up with one hand to touch his belly and trailing the other across my own.

He raised his eyebrows for half a moment in surprise, but definitely didn’t need telling twice.

 

 

“Christ,” I was able to say to the ceiling above Blaine’s bed, several minutes later, as I threw the inside of my elbow over my face and groaned. The room stank. “Was that the fourth time you’ve made me come tonight?”

“Your teenage libido is _fuuun_ ,” he said, nudging my ribs and running a fingertip through the mess on my skin.

I turned to look at him, letting my arm down to touch his. “Your abuse of it is _exhausting_.”

Blaine’s lips twisted up into a smile as he sucked his finger between them. “I haven’t heard any complaints.”

Snorting, I nudged him back, before turning toward him and tucking my face into his shoulder. “Can I sleep now?”

“Yes, babe.”

“Except I really need another shower. And... curfew.”

He hummed.

“Your tongue does excellent things,” I said, my eyes drooping shut. “What did you call that earlier?”

“Rimming, Kurt.”

“Yes, that.”

“I’m glad you liked it. I’ll wake you up in an hour.”

I sighed, nodding slightly into Blaine, and when he started to move under me, our skins dragging against each other, I frowned, and said his name softly.

He kissed my forehead and sat up. “Be right back. Gonna wash my hands and clean you up. I’m kinda all over you.”

“Gross,” I said softly, falling onto my back again.

Blaine snickered. “Utterly debauched. Sleep.”

 

 

Finn was watching mindless television when I got in, ten minutes past curfew. “Dude. You okay?”

“What?”

“I don’t know, you just look... really relaxed.”

Try _thoroughly fucked_ , I thought, as some hair fell over my forehead. “Yeah, I guess that’s ‘cause I am.”

“I heard Burt and my mom talking about you guys.”

“Okay.”

“Why do you get to have sex with him?”

“I’m not having this conversation with you, Finn.”

“But—wh—it’s not _fair_.”

“What’s not fair?” I asked, kicking myself for continuing at all, and started up the stairs towards my room, my muscles protesting a little. Finn got up from the couch and followed.

“That you get to have sex with him.”

I scoffed, hedging. “Well I’m certainly not letting _you_ have a go.”

“No! I mean, that like, why is it okay?”

I rounded on him as I got to the doorway of my room. “My dad _understands_ , Finn, that Blaine and I have a healthy relationship, that we take care of each other, and that we can be mature about sex.”

“But—”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with you, Finn. No one told you to _not_ have sex besides the girls you’ve been with. You thought Quinn could get pregnant in a _hot tub_.”

“Hey, most of that was _what I wanted to believe_ , Kurt. It’s not like you know much more than me. We took the same sex ed classes.”

I sighed. “Finn, just, please let it go.”

“But—”

“Dammit, Finn! Dad didn’t give _permission_. We’d been doing it for a while before he even found out. And that’s far more than you need to know. Please go now.”

“Are you using protection?”

“Yes, we are! I’m not _stupid_.”

“Okay! Jeez. Just, you know, _making sure_. I mean, I know you guys can’t make babies or anything but—”

“Finn, please! Thank you for your concern, but shut up!”

“It’s still unfair.”

“Then get a steady, emotionally healthy girlfriend who’ll put out for you. This conversation’s over.”

 

 

Starting school again after the break was irritating. Mr. Schue had obviously come back more energized than usual, Rachel and Quinn kept giving each other and Finn the stinkeye, and Finn just looked like he wanted to disappear.

Going home to snuggle with my boyfriend was exactly what the doctor ordered. Blaine squirmed, though, shifting on the couch—something wasn’t right with his treatment plan. I could feel his lips on the back of my head as I reclined against his chest from between his legs, my fingers tracing up and down his arms. Tilting my face up, I pressed my forehead under his chin. “You okay?”

“My leg’s asleep.”

“D’you want to switch?” I asked, sitting up and touching his knees.

Blaine hummed, smoothing his hands up my back, and I closed my eyes at his touch until he moved one of his socked feet from between me and the backrest and moved to the edge of the couch. Scooting back, I tucked myself into Blaine’s previous position and pulled him down against my chest. I let my fingers stroke through his hair, and Blaine let out a sigh that didn’t sound quite like contentment.

“Penny for your thoughts,” I whispered into his curls, trailing my hands down his neck to spread out over his chest.

He groaned softly. “I haven’t been able to concentrate at work.”

“Because you keep expecting your dad to walk in?” Blaine nodded, and I sighed, kissing his temple and holding him. “Are you proud of what you have, Blaine?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your life, your job, me—do you feel good about it? Does it make you happy? Would you defend it?”

“Yeah.”

“Then show him that, and if he has a problem with it then he can step off. You’re financially independent from him and old enough to make your own decisions.”

Blaine sighed, curling his arms around my thighs. “Stop making this sound so simple.”

“Hey.” Taking his face in my hands, I made him look at me. “He wouldn’t come over specifically to start a fight. This is on your turf, Blaine. You _have_ power. And you have me.”

“Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not letting him anywhere near you.” Blaine turned onto his stomach then, and settled back between my thighs, hugging my ribs.

I brushed back his curls with my fingers. “You really think there’s anything he can come up with that I haven’t heard before?”

“He could try to call me a pedophile,” Blaine said quietly.

“And I’d rip him a new asshole, and make sure he understands which one of us is whipped,” I told him, even though I knew he was right, that it would be a classic fear excuse, to just pass him off as a pervert, preying on me.

Blaine smirked, resting his face on my chest. “He wouldn’t like either of those things.”

“What, you being whipped?” I slid a hand down his back to knead into the cleft of his ass through his jeans, and Blaine grumbled against my collarbone, rocking back into my touch. “I suppose not,” I added, smiling.

He sighed heavily, pressing his face into my shirt and whining. “Please.”

“No. I’m better at comebacks than you anyway. It’s not a discussion.”

 

 

Blaine texted me a few days later, a few minutes before my classes broke for lunch. **_My dad called, he’s coming in later today. Coffee’s a no-go, sorry, I’ll call you later._** I wanted to skip so badly, camp out at Trax and wait with Blaine for his father to arrive. As soon as my last class let out I was almost running to my car, though I still hadn’t heard any more from him.

Blaine was behind the counter when I got there, and went stiff as the door opened, but his entire body visibly sagged when he saw that it was me. “Hey, you.”

“Hi,” I said as I reached him, wrapping my arms around him. “You’ve been completely useless all day, haven’t you.”

Blaine sighed, groaning.

“I’m gonna stick this out with you, okay?”

His fingers gripped my shirt tightly as he tucked his face into my neck. “I won’t be able to talk you out of this, will I?”

I shook my head, kissing his hair. “Let’s go sit in your office. You’re so tense.”

Sliding his hand into mine, Blaine followed me back towards his office. David threw a catcall in our direction, and Blaine turned to him. “Come get me if a man in a suit with my hair shows up, please.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

 

 

Wes knocked on the door about half an hour later, and after a pause, poked his head in. “Your dad’s here. Should I send him in?”

Blaine sighed. “Yeah, just... give us a minute.” After the door closed again, he turned to me—one of the two guest chairs from in front of Blaine’s desk had been pulled to his side, and I sat in it beside him. “You don’t have to be here,” he said, once again. “Getting through this with him without a screaming match in my workplace means either cowering or losing all emotion. I just... I’ve never been—”

“ _I will help you_ ,” I told him softly, gripping his hand.

He sighed, lifting his other hand to my hair and kissing my cheek. “I wish I didn’t feel like I needed you to.”

Blaine stood when his father opened the office door. “Hi, Dad,” he said, his tone hard.

Craig Anderson had a domineering presence as he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him—he was taller than me, obviously taller than Blaine, but didn’t seem particularly menacing. “Nice place you have here,” his father replied, looking around. “I was in town for a—”

“Yeah, Mom told me.”

“Well. I need to talk to you about something.”

“Okay,” Blaine said, still unforgiving, and I slid my fingers into the crook of his elbow, squeezing. He sighed. “Do you want to sit down?” His father did so, and Blaine turned to me. “This is my boyfriend, Kurt Hummel.”

I extended my other hand across the desk for him to shake. “Nice to meet you.”

After a beat and pressing his lips together, Mr. Anderson nodded and took it, muttering a _you too_ and turning back to his son. “I want to apologize first, for what I said at Christmas,” he said. “I was... that was out of line.” Blaine bit his lip, gripping my hand as I sat back beside him, and when he didn’t respond, his father continued. “I... so, I guess I should just come out with it—in February, I went to the doctor for a physical, and they found a tumor on my pancreas. It was a couple of weeks before we could find out if it was benign or not. And it was benign, but... during that time, you remember Renee?”

I looked to Blaine, who was nodding, his eyebrows raised.

“Well, she wanted me to go see her pastor, so I did, and he told me that if this was going to threaten my life, I should think about trying to look at the things I regret, tie up my loose ends while I’m still healthy enough to work on them. I told him about having a gay son, and he asked how I dealt with that.”

Blaine set his jaw, waiting.

His father sighed, rubbing his hand over his eyebrows the same way I’d seen Blaine do so many times. “I told him that I judged you, cut you off, and fought with your mother. That I ruined our relationship, and we don’t speak.”

“And the tumor’s benign,” Blaine said tightly.

“Yes. When I called the pastor again to tell him, he said I should do everything he had suggested anyway. So... here I am.”

There was silence then, as Blaine looked down at his desk for several seconds before looking back up. “Why now?” he asked. “Because you’re not dying? I don’t get it, Dad. You’ve done nothing but make me feel worthless for years. But I have a good life now, aside from you. I support myself.”

Blaine’s father sighed. “I know it sounds...”

“It sounds like something I would have given _anything_ to hear you admit when I was in high school,” he said, his voice hollow in his throat. “You can’t put a Band-Aid on this, the way you made me feel.” I flexed my hand in his, opening it and rethreading our fingers.

“Blaine... I—” He trailed off, shaking his head.

“Would you still have said any of this if you hadn’t been afraid of death, Dad? If the _pastor_ hadn’t _told you to?_ ” Blaine’s voice cracked a little, and he pressed a hand over his mouth.

“You don’t understand. When you were growing up, I just wanted what was best for you, and what God would have—”

“No. Your only job was to take care of him,” I interrupted, looking up, turning my hand in Blaine’s to spread over the inseam of his jeans. “He was confused and scared enough to begin with, and then you gave him _conditions on your love?_ Blaine is a _good person_. That should have been enough. Religion doesn’t have anything to do with your duty as a father.”

“How dare you—”

“ _I dare_ because I was raised by a single dad for pretty much all of my middle and high school,” I spat. “He’s an auto mechanic, a meat-and-potatoes Conservative, but he _tries_ and he makes sure that his flaming homosexual of a son is taken care of. Without his protection and guidance and encouragement, and without _your son_ , I might not be here.”

Blaine was staring at me when I finished, his eyes shining with tears and my hand gripping his thigh, but it was his father that spoke first.

“Do you believe in God?” he asked, his voice neutral.

“My father does,” I said.

Dad let me stay at Blaine’s that night after some beseeching and promises to work at the garage for the next two weekends, and when I got to his apartment with my overnight bag, Blaine had ordered a pizza. He shifted in his chair again and again as we ate, and regarded me with tired, pleading eyes as he picked at a single slice. When we were done with the food and had put the plates and leftovers away, I took his face in my hands, running my fingers through the curls at the back of his neck, asking what he needed.

Blaine sighed, leaning into my touch. “Can you—I need _you_ , just, please—” His voice went shaky, and he fisted the front of my shirt, brushing his lips against mine. “Please.”

I nodded and pulled his t-shirt over his head, dropping it to the kitchen floor as we moved towards the bedroom. I sat Blaine down on the edge of his bed and knelt to undo his belt, leaning in to nuzzle against his belly as he lifted his hips and helped me tug his jeans off.

“Are you sure this is what you want right now?” I asked him softly, brushing my hands back up his thighs after they had tossed his pants aside. “We don’t have to do anything. Talk to me.”

He reached for me then, guiding me onto the bed with him. “I just need to feel something else,” he said, as he scooted up toward the headboard and lay down on his side, brushing his thumb over my cheek as I went with him. “I only want to feel _you_ right now. Not any of this bullshit.”

I nodded again, and wrapped my arms around him. We rolled across the mattress as our hands pulled at my clothes, and I dug in the dark for the lube and condoms in the bedside table. When I turned back toward him and dropped our supplies onto the bed, he was pushing the covers down the bed and taking me into his mouth, which was surprising but not at all unwelcome—a slow understanding dawned, though, and I realized what he was asking for with this. I opened my mouth and didn’t stop talking to him, let him concentrate on my response to him, my hands in his hair and on his shoulders, and the subtle roll of my hips. I thought he’d want to pull off so I could fuck him, but Blaine barreled through all of my warnings, holding my hips down and meeting my eyes until I came.

I took my time loosening him up with my fingers after I recovered, kissing his body and rocking with him as I got hard for him again. I made love to him, spoke softly to him, wound him up until he begged, his legs hitched around my waist, and wondered if this would last, how long it would be before he broke down.

Blaine and I had long since mastered the art of distraction—it might be on the verge of unhealthy, perhaps, but I knew that we had both used each other as a vehicle for that before, for temporary forgetting. If I could give him something instead of letting him curl up with a few bottles of liquor, something he swore I would never see him do, then I would give him anything.

He sobbed into my shoulder afterward, when we had settled back into the pillows after having shared a shower and brushed our teeth. It started slowly, just Blaine sniffling heavily against my collarbone, but as I held him more tightly and whispered, _it’s okay, honey_ , he choked. I kept a hand wrapped around the back of his neck and let him cling to me as he cried, and the long minutes it took to soothe him felt like hours. I had never felt so responsible for anyone like this, such a sense of duty, not even to my dad, and the combination of _needing_ Blaine to be okay and having no clue if I was doing what he needed me to was terrifying. It wasn’t until I blinked hard and tears leaked out the corners of my eyes that I realized I was crying with him.

His father had told him _to just think about it_ , that he wants to try.

I had waited in the doorway to the office as Blaine walked him out, and barely caught him upon his return, when he nearly crumpled to the floor.

I didn’t know what would happen, or even what I _wanted_ to happen.

At that point, I don’t think Blaine did either.

 

 

**May**

Blaine was the one that suggested Murder In The Dark at a party at Puck’s place—it was half-past ten and the sun had set. Only Tina had heard of the game before, and as she and Blaine explained it to the rest of New Directions, I was fairly apprehensive even though I had gotten through one and a half appletinis. Blaine was sober, even after Puck’s several attempts to get a drink in his hand.

He dealt the cards anonymously, and only one was the Joker—whoever was lucky enough to receive that card would mill around the dark house with everyone else until they got someone alone, and drag a finger across their throat. That person would then fall to the floor silently, and wait for someone else to find their body.

Quinn called “Town meeting!” first—we all returned to Puck’s kitchen and flipped on the lights. Mike was dead; she’d found him sprawled out rather comically in the living room.

“Any leads?” Blaine asked the group. Mike mimed zipping his lips.

“It wasn’t Sam or Brittany, we were upstairs for the past few minutes,” Finn said as an alibi.

Mercedes bit her lip. “Uh, Rachel was really acting like a creeper earlier, but...”

“Uh, Rachel’s always a creeper,” Santana smirked.

“Does anyone actually have any evidence?” Blaine asked. This was the first town meeting of the round—like Mafia, sometimes the guesses couldn’t have anything behind them. “We can forgo lynching anyone if no one has an idea who the murderer is. We can keep going and wait ‘til later.”

Puck nodded. “That sounds good.”

With the group in agreement, Blaine shut off the lights again, and as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I grabbed his hand, pulling him with me down the hall and up the stairs.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“ _Hiding_ ,” I whispered, and tugged him through the doorway of the guest bedroom.

Blaine let me push him onto the bed and follow, smiling against my lips as I kissed him. “What are you doing?”

“You’ll find out,” I breathed in his ear, attaching my lips below his jaw.

Humming, Blaine relaxed under me, his hands drifting down to my ass as my fingers cupped over his dick and squeezed gently. He gasped into my mouth before his tongue came out to drag across my lower lip, and as I brought my own tongue out to slide against his, I took my pointer finger and slid it across his Adam’s apple.

“Seriously?” he breathed. “You’re so cruel.”

“And you’re dead,” I said in his ear before kissing it. “See you later.”

That ended up being a terrible strategy—Santana had seen us go up the stairs together, and no one else would have left Blaine dead on a bed. When we started again with a new Joker, Blaine made sure to lightly grope my ass in the dark every time we passed each other, chuckling in my ear when I would tweak a nipple through his navy blue button-down.

 

 

“It’s just one clean line down the middle.”

“I feel like I’m _dissecting a frog_ ,” I said, and Blaine snorted. “What if I rip the sides when I open it up?”

“It’s okay. You’re just going to eat it anyway.”

“But I want it to be pretty.”

“Oh, no, Kurt, twice-baked potatoes are the most glorious things you’ll ever see. They’re beautiful on principle. Don’t worry about what it looks like in the book, and don’t cut off the entire top—the skin’s one of the best parts.”

I chuckled at him, taking off my oven mitt and wiping my wrist across my brow. “Okay.”

“You boys need any help?” Carole asked, breezing into the kitchen.

Finn’s birthday dinner was that night—Carole had told me that this was his favorite specialty thing, it took too much effort and time to make regularly. When I mentioned it to Blaine, his face lit up and he called his mother for her recipe, and then took me shopping for chives, sour cream and gorgonzola.

“No thanks, I just hope you’re ready for greatness,” Blaine said, grinning at her.

Carole smiled back and squeezed his shoulder before leaning in to kiss his cheek. “Thanks for helping with this, sweetie.”

“Of course, Mrs.—,” Blaine stopped. “Carole.”

Carole shook her head. “You sure know how to pick ‘em, Kurt.”

 

 

“You’re lucky I love scarves,” I sighed, only halfway aggravated as I stared into Blaine’s bathroom mirror, itching at my bare chest.

The purple-red blotches trailed from my collarbone up to behind my ear. I hadn’t let him mark anywhere visible in a long time—my chest and inner thighs had gotten a lot of action though.

“I love your neck,” he said over my shoulder, his arms wrapping around my abdomen, hands rubbing. “And your stomach, god.”

“That’s all?”

He smiled against my skin, his fingertips scratching through the hair below my belly button. “Don’t make me be crass, Kurt.”

“You’ve never been afraid to be crass before,” I said, covering his hands with mine.

Blaine snickered, kissing the back of my neck and nosing into my hair. “You like it when I talk dirty to you? Stroke your ego?”

“Occasionally,” I whispered, leaning into him.  
  
He tucked his chin back over my shoulder, and our eyes met in the mirror. “I could also just say that I love you in general, because it’s true.”

It took me a couple of seconds to process that, and then I smiled.

“That’s probably nowhere near as special and romantic as you were hoping for, I’m sorry,” he added, laughing, but I turned in Blaine’s arms, crashing my lips to his.

“I love you in general too.”

He grinned, kissing me once, twice more, his hands finding my hips. “Good.”

“Y’know there are ninety-six words for that in Sanskrit?” I asked softly.

“Huh?”

“Love. It just irritates me. Like, us saying that, right now, that means something different than when I say it to my dad or to Mercedes, or to my scarves. With English, all we have to rely on is inflection, or context, it’s based on assumptions. It almost makes me wish we hadn’t said it.”

His eyes widened. “Why?”

“Because I can tell just from the way you treat me every day that you love me, Blaine, and that means a lot more to me than a word does.”  
  
The smile on Blaine’s face was a perfect example, as he traced his fingers up and down my chest and hummed approval. I nuzzled against his cheek, nipping under his jaw before turning on the shower and stepping inside.

 

 

**June**

Blaine deejayed the Junior prom. I’m not sure whose idea that was, but it worked out pretty well for me because while he worked the crowd I got to dance with my girls and listen to them fawn over him. His selections had been generally well-received and he had played several requests to the delight of my peers, and at the end of the night, as the gym was emptying Blaine jumped off the small stage setup and danced with me to something classy and romantic with a large brass section.

And then he took me back to his apartment, and in the living area we undressed each other wordlessly, and kissed and touched slowly because for once, we finally had the whole night for this. I could wake up with my boyfriend and not be expected home until noon.

We hung our suits neatly in his closet, and took a shower because I was _covered_ in dancing sweat under all those layers, and I had to get the product out of Blaine’s hair so I could dig my fingers into it properly.

Blaine had a surprise planned, but that’s all he would tell me.

In the bedroom, naked, he reached into a dresser drawer and produced a black silk scarf. He asked me if I trusted him, and when I told him _yes_ , touching his neck, all he said was _good_. He turned me around, steady hands guiding my body until my back was to him, and kissed the back of my neck before tying the scarf over my eyes.

We had never used blindfolds before, but I was astonished to find that as long as he was touching me, I wasn’t nervous at all—in fact, I was positively _dizzy_ with want—and when he asked if I felt comfortable, I gestured to my dick. He stretched me out on the bed and whispered kisses down my spine and sank his thumbs into my muscles and licked me open and drove me entirely fucking _nuts_ until I couldn’t take anymore and pinned him to the mattress and brought my mouth down over his cock. The taste of him and the sounds he made were so intense when I couldn’t see him, and the muscle memory between the two of us was on high.

His hands—everywhere—felt electric.

And then he brought out a vibrator.

As we came down some minutes later and he slipped the blindfold from over my eyes, we didn’t need to speak. Grinning into each other’s mouths, we laughed and kissed lazily for a while before dragging ourselves back out of bed to clean up and brush our teeth.

I went through my nightly skin routine in front of Blaine’s mirror—the overnight bag I packed held some things I was planning to leave there in the medicine cabinet—and he smiled down at all of my products on his counter as he flossed. We made faces at each other in the mirror, and Blaine stripped the sheets and put clean ones on while I finished brushing my teeth.

Second only, perhaps, to the rimming, was tangling up with him and the covers to sleep.

 

 

I stared up at the popcorn ceiling of Blaine’s bedroom, the sheets pulled just over my waist and a smile on my face. Sunlight streamed through the blinds, sending stripes of shadow across Blaine’s bed. He wasn’t in it with me, but I knew he’d be back—I’d called his name upon waking, but a note left on the duvet in his handwriting had been the only response:  


> _Kurt—_
> 
> _Taking Stevie out for a run. I love having you in my bed, so please don’t go anywhere._
> 
> _Generally,  
>  B_

His side of the bed was still slightly warm.

A few minutes later I heard keys jingling and the front door open, and Blaine’s voice talking softly to his dog. When he opened the door to the bedroom, he was scruffy and covered in sweat, and he wiped his face with a dry section of his t-shirt before crossing to the bed for a good-morning kiss.

“Imma take a shower,” he murmured, kissing my forehead as well. “You look... ravishing.”

I snorted, smacking his arm and immediately regretting it, wiping my hand on the sheets. “Ugh, get away from me.”

Stevie followed him in and leapt onto the bed with us, and I groaned until she settled comfortably at my side. Scratching behind her ears, Blaine smiled at me and got off the bed, stripping his shirt and shorts on the way to the bathroom.  
  
While the shower ran, I sat up against the headboard and looked down at the dog, who panted at me before resting her head on my thigh. I scratched her neck until she kicked, arching toward me, and then swung my legs over the edge of the bed to dress minimally and join Blaine in the bathroom.

The two of us migrated to the kitchen afterwards, Blaine smelling like aftershave, and sipped the coffee that he had started before he left. We stared into his refrigerator together, and when I lifted a red bell pepper and baby spinach out of the crisper, Blaine and I looked at each other—omelets?—and he reached for the carton of eggs as well as the half-gallon of milk.

“Okay, let’s roleplay,” I said as I whisked five eggs together in a bowl. “You be you, and I’ll be my dad.”

Blaine cleared his throat and repositioned the bell pepper he was chopping. “So... Mr. Hummel, I want to take Kurt up to Columbus for Pride weekend, and ride the hell out of him in my mom’s house.”

I grinned, unscrewing the cap on the milk and pouring some in with the eggs. “Oh Blaine, that sounds like a wonderful idea. Can I come too?”

He laughed, finishing the bell pepper and kissing my shoulder. “I don’t know, Mr. Hummel. There will be a lot of naked people in the streets, a lot of glitter and drag queens and free condoms and no reservations whatsoever. I’m not sure if it would be your thing.”

“Huh,” I said thoughtfully, taking the eggshells off the counter and throwing them in the trash. “Will your mother be there?”

“My mom got enough of Pride the time she went with me when I was eighteen. After that I had enough friends to go with.”

I raised my eyebrows at him, pressing into the small of his back in a way my dad definitely _wouldn’t_. “I mean, will she be at the house while you fuck my son.”

“Oh,” Blaine said, slitting open the bag of baby spinach and pulling out a handful to wash in the sink. “I mean, yeah, but she won’t be like, _supervising_ too much, I don’t think.”

“Why do you want to go to this anyway, kid?” Turning away from the counter, I opened the fridge again and found the grated cheddar as he ran the spinach under the tap.

Blaine shook most of the water off the spinach and laid it on a paper towel before facing me, lifting one damp hand to my cheek. “Because I want to show Kurt what it’s like to be in a crowd full of people who aren’t afraid.”

I smiled at him, leaning into his touch. “And not at all because the eye candy is fantastic.”  
  
“ _Well_ ,” he whispered, and kissed me.

“The answer is no, Anderson,” I said gruffly against his lips as he pulled away. “This trip sounds entirely too scandalous."

Blaine laughed, ducking his head. “A guy can dream, can’t he?” I grabbed his chin in my thumb and forefinger, and he looked up immediately, meeting my eyes, his eyebrows lifting in a silent question.

“Yes, you can,” I told him, beaming. “And so can I.”

 

 

\---

 

 

Jacob Ben Israel posted his idea of an “exposé” about Blaine on his blog after the prom—stalker photos from The Lima Bean. Trax had the windows broken two nights later, and while Wes and David tried to deny it for our sakes, I knew it was because the kids from McKinley had figured out who my boyfriend was.

He got the call on his cell phone at four in the morning, from the security company.

Blaine called me at seven. I brought him coffee on my way to school, and again after three, the latter of which he almost breathlessly called me a saint for and kissed my jaw in his half-asleep state. Whoever broke the windows didn’t seem to have stolen anything, and as the police took his statement, he said he had no idea who could have done it.

 _I don’t want to have a vendetta, Kurt_ , he said. _Unless they start spray-painting slurs on the outside of the building, I don’t feel like fighting back against a bunch of kids that would only end up in juvie anyway._

We went to Pride at the end of June, had another awkward run-in with Rachel and her dads, and ogled the men and ate carnival food for several hours. Clutching Blaine’s hand and kissing him in public and seeing color and music and happiness all around us was more than I could have imagined it to be, and he grinned into my neck, shirtless and sweaty and beautiful, and I decided there could never be anyone I’d be more in love with.

I knew he would never let me waste my youth, even in my haste to get out of it—he would inspire me to harness and manhandle it into what I believed it could be.


End file.
